OK, that's a bit clearer, thanks. You do realize that both of us were reacting primarily to the headline you gave this? In general, sucky -documentation- is almost the norm for open source (nothing against open source at all.... it's just that people who know open source focus on just that, and it does take an awful long time before someone comes in to write documentation... usually they are smart people who -understand- it but don't program). Engineers don't write good docs...
@altgeeky1 Poor documentation is simply not acceptable, & is unprofessional. I'm an engineer and I do GOOD documentation, because I've been on the receiving end of piss-poor (or no) documentation.
Your comment is a bit unfair, and should be attributed to yourself not the hardware designer.
Seriously - charlieplexing LEDs is a big hack. It is clever but too complicated for most people to immediately understand. The hardware designer can not teach you how to use a common Arduino library, so you should depend on other sources, examples (there are a lot of LOLshield posts here), and the shift register datasheet.
It also helps to know what you want to do, before starting to code.
@altgeeky1 It wasn't the hardware. The hardware is fine. The example sketches are CRAP. There are NO comments in them. Some of them won't even compile. The code seems to be obfuscated for no apparent reason, using things like "uint_8t".. Nobody in the Arduino world uses that terminology, it took me forever to figure out what the hell that meant. And then putting crap like "for j=13 to -100" wtf? Turns out, -100 is actually 156.. That's purposeful obfuscation that only confuses people.
@unaclocker Bad code is bad code, you're right! Bad code = lazy "programmer" (note the quote marks for sarcasm). :(
the "uint_8t" and similar data type declarators are typically compiler or support-file specific and should not have been used. "unsigned char" would have done the job just fine!
@unaclocker I agree. I bought a LoLShield and the documentation is indeed poor. After some digging I did eventually find some clearer example code, and figured out how to save long scrolling messages in the PROGMEM, which allows for much longer texts to be saved. This information ought to be easier to locate.
It's a bit of a shame, since I think it's a great product, but unfortunately suffers from poor documentation.
Have you ever thought about scrolling text, as much space as you want
electromaniack1 8 months ago
OK, that's a bit clearer, thanks. You do realize that both of us were reacting primarily to the headline you gave this? In general, sucky -documentation- is almost the norm for open source (nothing against open source at all.... it's just that people who know open source focus on just that, and it does take an awful long time before someone comes in to write documentation... usually they are smart people who -understand- it but don't program). Engineers don't write good docs...
altgeeky1 11 months ago
@altgeeky1 Poor documentation is simply not acceptable, & is unprofessional. I'm an engineer and I do GOOD documentation, because I've been on the receiving end of piss-poor (or no) documentation.
AtmelInAtlanta 7 months ago
Your comment is a bit unfair, and should be attributed to yourself not the hardware designer.
Seriously - charlieplexing LEDs is a big hack. It is clever but too complicated for most people to immediately understand. The hardware designer can not teach you how to use a common Arduino library, so you should depend on other sources, examples (there are a lot of LOLshield posts here), and the shift register datasheet.
It also helps to know what you want to do, before starting to code.
altgeeky1 11 months ago
@altgeeky1 It wasn't the hardware. The hardware is fine. The example sketches are CRAP. There are NO comments in them. Some of them won't even compile. The code seems to be obfuscated for no apparent reason, using things like "uint_8t".. Nobody in the Arduino world uses that terminology, it took me forever to figure out what the hell that meant. And then putting crap like "for j=13 to -100" wtf? Turns out, -100 is actually 156.. That's purposeful obfuscation that only confuses people.
unaclocker 11 months ago 2
@unaclocker Bad code is bad code, you're right! Bad code = lazy "programmer" (note the quote marks for sarcasm). :(
the "uint_8t" and similar data type declarators are typically compiler or support-file specific and should not have been used. "unsigned char" would have done the job just fine!
AtmelInAtlanta 7 months ago
@unaclocker I agree. I bought a LoLShield and the documentation is indeed poor. After some digging I did eventually find some clearer example code, and figured out how to save long scrolling messages in the PROGMEM, which allows for much longer texts to be saved. This information ought to be easier to locate.
It's a bit of a shame, since I think it's a great product, but unfortunately suffers from poor documentation.
andydoro 5 months ago