Need to represent the funky header spacing in it somewhere.

Yeah searching directly on YaBB is pretty weak.  I always head to arduino.cc and use that search box, since it indexes the forums, playground, and docs through Google.

For a community to grow, survive, and thrive, the new people who know a little *have* to respond I think.  Sure someone with more knowledge might come along and offer a better / more complete response, but if the new people don't participate, the community is in trouble.  The experienced people will, over time, get tired of answering the same questions over and over again, so its good for the new people to hop in and start answering the simpler / repeat questions.  

I certainly don't wait for someone more knowledgeable / experienced to chime in on a thread if I have something I think is worth sharing.  If someone else comes along and refutes me, everyone learns.  

Why do some questions receive zero replies?  As discussed earlier I think, there are innumerable reasons, but I certainly hope that waiting for an 'authority' to chime in first isn't the dominant reason.

In any community there will be loud people, and quiet people.  People with a lot of knowledge, people with little knowledge.  These will combine themselves in interesting ways.  I'd rather leave it up to individuals to decide whom to listen to, and whom to ignore.

Maybe if the forums had a rating system, so we could + / - people we thought were helpful.  Those with much knowledge would get brought up by the many people who found their information useful.  

Having to answer a quiz like "What's the recommended serial voltage for an XBee?" before you could register for the forums would certainly have driven me away from what I've found to be a really wonderful community.

There's never going to be a perfect signal to noise ratio.  So far, the signal here far outstrips the noise.

Here's a linux capable board that has all your direct I/O goodness:

http://www.robotshop.us/roboard-rb-100-vortex86dx-single-board-computer-2.html

at $250USD it's not exactly competing with the Arduino.

You might also just experiment with opening and closing a gate for a certain time and see how much you get.  Also I've seen bulk dispensers that have a fixed size compartment that fills up, then you slide or rotate the compartment out and you always get the same amount.

http://www.food-display.us.com/food-display-wide-2.asp?ID=12533

I usually do all my searching through the search box on them main arduino.cc site.  That one searches both the forums and playground in one swoop.

Web Developer / Programmer

Someone made me a manager recently, so no I don't get to play in the code so much at work.  Arduino is a nice technical hobby that is different enough from work that I can stay sane.

No job == more time for hobbies!

From a code readability standpoint, I like:

pinMode(pin, INPUT, ENABLE_PULLUP);
pinMode(pin, INPUT, DISABLE_PULLUP);
pinMode(pin, INPUT);
pinMode(pin, OUTPUT);

File->Examples->stubs->BareMinimum ?

Never noticed that option, thanks for the tip.  8-)

Lefty

I think that's a perfect example of what this whole process is about.  Here's a great feature that's buried and few people knew about.

Maybe rethink the New menu item into a sub-menu:

Code:

File
  |
New ->  Empty File ^N
        ----------
        Basic File
        HelloWorld
        AnalogReadWrite
        (rest of files from Stubs folder)

I'll vote for a boilerplate template that gets used when you select "New..." from the start menu.  Having it just be an editable file somewhere so people could customize it if they want would be a bonus.

.ino might also work, in the spirit of the various *duinos out there.

You could possibly do some more with the IDE to make the process easier.

1. Add an 'install library' menu item or something.  A dialog pops up asking you to locate the .zip file containing the library you just downloaded.  The IDE then unzips the file, and puts the files in the right place for the system you're on.  This may require a standardized library packaging format, but probably nothing terribly difficult.

2. Maybe promote the 'import library' item from the Sketch menu to its own 'Libraries' menu.  Contributed libraries already show up in that menu if they're properly installed.  The Libraries menu could hold the install option, and then have options for 'use core library' or 'use contributed library' or something.