How to modify, or suggest a modification, to article in "Tutorial" section

Why aren't you sleeping!

.

LarryD:
Why aren't you sleeping!

Good question Larry, I wish I was. I have bouts of insomnia. Rather than just lay there trying to fall asleep, I just get back up again and continue whatever I was doing.

Back on the subject of errors in examples, I had originally hoped that forum moderators had the power to make changes like the one I suggested, but I guess not. It would sure make things easier though.

I'm sort of nervous about the next similar issue that I find. I won't look too hard now. :wink:

The last attempt at changing this was last year, I was told this:-

Luca Cipriani
do you mind writing at support@arduino.cc? they usually directly solve the problem on the wiki server.
Posted on Jun 25, 2015

Which I did, enclosing the text changes and modified bit mapped drawings for the web site.
Response - F all.

Anyone wanting to know the corrections see the attached.

Shift out tutorial correction.zip (1.08 MB)

Grumpy_Mike:
The last attempt at changing this was last year, I was told this:-Which I did, enclosing the text changes and modified bit mapped drawings for the web site.
Response - F all.

Anyone wanting to know the corrections see the attached.

Pretty much makes me lose hope before I even try. :frowning:

From now on, I'll pretend that I don't see all of those examples that use 'int' for pin allocations, instead of 'const int' or 'const byte'. :slight_smile:
(Another of my pet peeves.)

Here's an example:

2016-08-20 23:59 SPI reference error reported on forum

2016-08-21 03:32 I suggest reporting it to the tracker

2016-08-21 04:39 Issue submitted to tracker

2016-08-22 04:27 Suggested change made to reference and issue closed by agdl

2016-08-23 01:23 Edit correction requested

2016-08-23 03:37 Edit correction made by agdl

Less than two days to get it fixed, not so bad!

pert:
Here's an example:

2016-08-20 23:59 SPI reference error reported on forum

2016-08-21 03:32 I suggest reporting it to the tracker

2016-08-21 04:39 Issue submitted to tracker

2016-08-22 04:27 Suggested change made to reference and issue closed by agdl

2016-08-23 01:23 Edit correction requested

2016-08-23 03:37 Edit correction made by agdl

Less than two days to get it fixed, not so bad!

That's good service. I'm feeling more hopeful again. I'll see what happens. :slight_smile:

I just opened an issue on GitHub for the error in the 'Debounce' example, after a search for the term 'Debounce', which turned up nothing.
I'll see what happens, but won't hold my breath. :slight_smile:
(There are a lot more important issues for them to address, but you never know.)

I think I have come to the right conversation string. (Sorry, this is going to sound like a repeat of an ignored conversation, but I am persistent in a nice way - I hope.)

The article in the Arduino Playground on the DS3234 RTC has a couple of problems, the most serious of which is the software referenced by the author can't be downloaded.

I'd be happy to provide information and/or update the article because I have gotten the RTC to work with two different application sets in the public domain, one of which is on Github. (One works perfectly, and one has one function out of five or six that doesn't work properly, but it doesn't detract that much. I'll be investigating a fix, but don't hold your breath that I will be successful.)

This conversation thread is applicable to the Tutorial section. Should I follow the same approach for the Playground?

Thank you in advance for your advice.

Vic

(And thank you, OldSteve for help you have given me in the past. It was appreciated!)

The Arduino Playground is a different(better) situation than the Tutorials or other sections of the Arduino website because it's a publicly editable wiki. If you see any issues on the Playground please do go ahead and fix them. You can find more information on this at the Arduino Playground - Participate page.

When you go to make an edit a password page will appear. Don't worry, the user and password are prefilled. All you need to do is click the checkbox(or sometimes do a captcha) and you're in. This was added because the webmaster was concerned about spammers editing the playground.

When I find a dead link on the playground I try to fix it by doing some searching to see if the target page still exists but was just moved. If I can't find it then I check the Wayback Machine to see if a usable copy was archived. If the target page is truly gone then I remove the link.

Please don't request the Arduino developers to edit the Playground pages, they are the responsibility of the community. If you don't feel comfortable doing the edit it's fine to point out issues on the forum and hopefully a forum member will step up to fix it. I like the "Be Bold" philosophy of Wikipedia. Hopefully there are enough people like me watching the playground that community as a whole can be sure that the content continues to improve. I have subscribed to the Arduino Playground RSS feed. This gives me a notification for every edit so I can check it out and revert any vandalism or spam.

vdolcourt:
This conversation thread is applicable to the Tutorial section. Should I follow the same approach for the Playground?

My guess would be "Yes", but maybe someone else can verify. Two days ago I didn't know how to do it myself. :smiley:
Edit: The real answer is "No", as I just learned.

(And thank you, OldSteve for help you have given me in the past. It was appreciated!)

no problem. Glad I could help. :slight_smile:

OldSteve:
My guess would be "Yes", but maybe someone else can verify.

Please read my comment above. The answer is a definite "No you should not follow the same approach". We should only make requests of the developers when they are the only ones who can make those changes, as in the tutorial section. I agree that this is an appropriate thread to discuss the topic.

pert:
Please read my comment above. The answer is a definite "No you should not follow the same approach". We should only make requests of the developers when they are the only ones who can make those changes, as in the tutorial section. I agree that this is an appropriate thread to discuss the topic.

Sorry pert. Somehow I missed your previous reply until right now. (I don't think I realised there was a second page. :frowning: )
I stand corrected. (And I just made a note to that effect in my last reply.)

I'm pleased to report that this error has now been fixed by Arturo Guadalupi.
(Whaddya know, I could have held my breath. :smiley: )

Changed data type to unsigned long

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, pert. It was worth the effort after all. :slight_smile:

(I noticed that the debounce time was also changed to 'unsigned long', which wasn't necessary, but at least the variable that stores 'millis()' is now large enough to prevent problems.)

A little over a day, not so bad! I see he also fixed the tutorial.

It took a little effort on your part but that will benefit probably tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the years to come. Helping people on the forum is great but I always feel like the effort ends up being limited in effectiveness. There aren't enough of us to help out every beginner on a one to one basis. Sure maybe some others will find that thread on google and be helped by it but that doesn't seem to happen as much as it should. Fixing or improving the documentation/IDE/example sketches has the potential to make so much more of a difference. We don't even need to invest a lot of time doing it, if everyone just pitches in a little it really does add up.

It seems like a hassle to sign up for GitHub but it's really a cool website. Once you learn how to make pull requests it's so easy to contribute to projects. I'll be browsing some random library, maybe something I'll never use, and spot a small issue. If I had to learn SVN or send an email to some tech support person that probably would just be ignored I'd just forget about it and move on but if it's on GitHub I spend a few minutes submitting a pull request and the world is a better place. That led me into using git for version control on my own projects which has allowed me to work more efficiently and even made me a better programmer.

pert:
A little over a day, not so bad! I see he also fixed the tutorial.

It took a little effort on your part but that will benefit probably tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the years to come. Helping people on the forum is great but I always feel like the effort ends up being limited in effectiveness. There aren't enough of us to help out every beginner on a one to one basis. Sure maybe some others will find that thread on google and be helped by it but that doesn't seem to happen as much as it should. Fixing or improving the documentation/IDE/example sketches has the potential to make so much more of a difference. We don't even need to invest a lot of time doing it, if everyone just pitches in a little it really does add up.

It seems like a hassle to sign up for GitHub but it's really a cool website. Once you learn how to make pull requests it's so easy to contribute to projects. I'll be browsing some random library, maybe something I'll never use, and spot a small issue. If I had to learn SVN or send an email to some tech support person that probably would just be ignored I'd just forget about it and move on but if it's on GitHub I spend a few minutes submitting a pull request and the world is a better place. That led me into using git for version control on my own projects which has allowed me to work more efficiently and even made me a better programmer.

I agree that getting this fixed sure beats doing battle with heaps of people who have picked up the habit, explaining to them that 'long' is not the right way to do it. Especially since if they use 'long' in a program that doesn't run for an extended period, the problem won't show itself. But then they'll write one that has to run forever, and won't know what's causing the hassles.

I'm new to GitHub, only joined especially for this, so aren't yet familiar with all of the terms like "pull request", "commit" etc, but I'll soon get the hang of it all. (I found the GitHub "Hello World" introduction. I'll read through it tomorrow, when I'm wide awake.)

A little over a day was fantastic. Better than I could have hoped for.

Thanks again for the help.

Could somebody open an issue to fix the code on this reference page

Another user and myself get a failed compile but the one from the IDE examples works perfectly.

Both instances using MKR's

The error seems to be lines 54/55 (snippets below)

This one compiles.

  // Create open network. Change this line if you want to create an WEP network:
  if (WiFi.beginAP(ssid) != WL_CONNECTED) {
    Serial.println("Creating access point failed");
    // don't continue
    while (true);
  }

This one from the reference page doesn't

  // Create open network. Change this line if you want to create an WEP network:
  status = WiFi.beginAP(ssid);
  if (status != WL_AP_LISTENING) {
    Serial.println("Creating access point failed");
    // don't continue
    while (true);
  }

Ballscrewbob:
Could somebody open an issue to fix the code on .....

Bob, that "somebody" could be you. :wink:

There's no need to ask someone else to do it for you.

Edit: Just try to ensure that it's definitely a bug in the code, and that it hasn't already been reported.
You should probably also include the actual error message, IDE version, OS, and any other relevant information.

Hi Steve thought this section was to report bugs so I guess i already did :slight_smile:
Unless there is another more special place to report em ??

Oh its a bug fer sure as it fails in 3 IDE's if copied directy from the web page and compiles just fine if called as an example from WiFi101.

I tested it here after a user had an issue then tried it from the examples. Hopefully the user gets it going from the examples to confirm it at his end.

See here for details

Ballscrewbob:
Hi Steve thought this section was to report bugs so I guess i already did :slight_smile:
Unless there is another more special place to report em ??

Oh its a bug fer sure as it fails in 3 IDE's if copied directy from the web page and compiles just fine if called as an example from WiFi101.

I tested it here after a user had an issue then tried it from the examples. Hopefully the user gets it going from the examples to confirm it at his end.

See here for details

To get the "Debounce" matter fixed, (an IDE example and also in the "Tutorials" section), I had to make an issue report on GitHub. (That's what I started this thread for - to find out how it should be done.)

I thought this was in the same category, since it's a part of the "Reference". Maybe I'm wrong, in which case I spoke out-of-turn. Perhaps all you have to do is mention it here.

Hopefully someone will clarify, because I'm new to this bug-reporting/fixing thing. :smiley:

Edit: The keywords "open an issue" made me immediately think of a GitHub issue report.