I went through the Opla kit/IoT Carrier Lesson 6 Smart Garden Project, found several errors that needed to be corrected to make the sketch run.
When defining the 7 variables, the writeup tells you what permissions to choose but does not specify the update policy for each variable. Some of the projects tell you, many don't - I generally assume that means leave it at the default of On Change but that didn't work here. You need to define Humidity as Periodically or the sketch won't verify.
When building the dashboard, the project writeup shows you a table for 7 widgets but it looks like they just did a cut and paste from the section telling you how to define the variables. In the rows under Widgets it shows you variable types (like boolean) not widget types. The first three should be switches, Light should be value and the other three should be gauges.
With those fixes to the project tutorial instructions (and a few multiple starts before actually getting the board to connect to the IoT cloud), got it up and running.
Thank you for letting us know about this. We have escalated this to the team handling the contents, we will review the chapter and make the necessary changes.
k3tn:
I went through the Opla kit/IoT Carrier Lesson 6 Smart Garden Project, found several errors that needed to be corrected to make the sketch run.
When defining the 7 variables, the writeup tells you what permissions to choose but does not specify the update policy for each variable. Some of the projects tell you, many don't - I generally assume that means leave it at the default of On Change but that didn't work here. You need to define Humidity as Periodically or the sketch won't verify.
When building the dashboard, the project writeup shows you a table for 7 widgets but it looks like they just did a cut and paste from the section telling you how to define the variables. In the rows under Widgets it shows you variable types (like boolean) not widget types. The first three should be switches, Light should be value and the other three should be gauges.
With those fixes to the project tutorial instructions (and a few multiple starts before actually getting the board to connect to the IoT cloud), got it up and running.
Hi k3tn, thank you for reporting this issue. The table has now been updated with the correct widget types.
Regarding the other issue, the variable is by default set to "on change", which should not be an issue. This was tested and verified just now. Hopefully it is working for you now!
If you are not a bit experienced in coding and you encounter a technical decision that is not described in the tutorial, you will be confused. So why not add it to the table, even though the default behavior is working?
I spent two days with my opla kit now, and honestly it seems unfinished. The documentation still has bullets marked with TODO and there are differences between the variable names in the tables and sketches, for instance in the thermostat control sample variable table refers to cooler_control but dashboard screendump and code snippet uses activate_cooler which will throw an error during compilation.
I just sent in a very long feedback mail about my experience with the opla kit.
fotografikeren:
I just sent in a very long feedback mail about my experience with the opla kit.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share your feedback @fotografikeren. I think it can be very valuable to get the user perspective.
What I have encountered is that when I'm deeply experienced with some software, as will always be the case for the developers and other people closely involved in a project, it becomes difficult for me to spot the things that might be confusing to the user because my mind automatically fills in those missing pieces for me.