I just got my Kickstarter Sparki in the mail and so far, my initial impressions are not good.
On the box, it says: “easy to use” and “great beginner intro” and “a powerful platform for education” and “drag-and-drop programming”.
So far, none of that has proven true.
There is no “get started” tutorial on the website that meets the needs of someone who is truly just getting started.
I’m a former web designer and I cut my programming teeth on a TRS-80 Model I, so it’s not like I’m a complete n00b around computers, and yet I still found the basic set-up and tutorial information frustratingly sparse and incomplete.
For example, the first tutorial I came across was the RGB light tutorial. However, this tutorial FAILED to mention that once I uploaded that code, the remote-control and wall avoidance code that Sparki came with would be ERASED. It also FAILED to mention how to STOP the light from blinking.
So now I have a robot that does nothing but blink. Period.
I’m sure I will eventually figure out how to upload the wall avoidance code and remote-control code to Sparki again, but that’s not the point. The point is that these tutorials are not looking at things from the point of view of a true beginner. They also are not complete since they tell you how to load code, but not how to stop it from running. This may seem obvious to someone with more experience with the robot, but it is not obvious to someone just pulling the Sparki out of the box and going to the website for the first time.
As for being “ideal for education”, not sure about that. I expected a robust curriculum (such as lesson plans, exercises and project ideas), but what I found on the website was sparse and lacking any cohesive planning. As an educator, I can tell you that a few random tutorials is NOT a curriculum!! Where’s the unit plan? Where’s the teacher’s guide?
Again, I’m sure I’ll eventually figure these things out on my own, but I had expected there to at least be something available as a starting point. A rough outline at the very least. Quite frankly, I have been VERY disappointed with the tutorials on the website so far. They assume too much, lack any cohesiveness and basically seem to be random feature highlights rather than a series of lessons designed to progressively familiarize me with the robot and the code.
Lastly, there’s the SparkiDuino application itself. When I read that I would have to configure the board and COM port myself, my initial reaction was disbelief? Really?!?! What are we stuck in 1990?
Here’s a rule of thumb for you: “Any application that asks people to configure COM ports cannot call itself ‘easy to use’!!!”
Why on Earth am I doing that? Every other application from THIS century can automagically configure those things on its own. It is ridiculous to ask users to configure ports and boards in this day and age. Are we using Commodore 64’s here? No!
The application also doesn’t tell me if I have the right port, so that means trying to compile the code, and getting an error, or trying to compile the code and having it stall indefinitely. Eventually by trial and error, I get the right port, but the next time I plug the robot in, that port doesn’t work any more.
Try sorting this out while you have a classroom full of fidgety kids waiting for you to puzzle everything out so you can get the Wall Avoidance code and Remote Control code (that you just unknowingly ERASED) back onto the robot so they can play with it again.
So much for “ideal for education”…
Right now, the only emotion I have towards this product is: disappointment.
Oh, and the Wall Avoidance code that the application comes with has errors in it. Great…
Luckily I actually know how to code (not in Arduino, but I can figure it out).
I can’t imagine what people who don’t know how to code are going to do when they erase the Wall Avoidance code because they stupidly followed the RGB tutorial and then try to upload broken code to their Sparki.
Is this how you “educate” newcomers? By giving them broken code they must fix on their own?
Yeah, fortunately, I had been playing with arduino boards for a couple of months before I got sparki. Saw the stuff about comms ports and thought, yep, been there (prior frustration), done that.
The documentation is a bit sparse and some code described on the website has not been implemented yet. This is definitely what they call the “bleeding edge”.
As a bot though, it’s got a LOT of potential and I hope the developers are getting stuck into preparing tutorials and filling in code holes. I think it’s such a neat package it’s going to get quit a lot of folk contributing code examples and fixes, all a bit hard to track and deal with if you’re pushed for implementation time.
OK, I’ve been messing around with it for a few hours and I’m beginning to think that by following that RGB tutorial on the website, that I have just BRICKED my Sparki!!
NONE of the example codes included with the SparkiDuino app will load to my robot now. I’m getting include errors, unable to delete errors, unable to upload errors, etc… nothing is working.
Seriously. Right now I’ve got a blinking LED light that I paid a hundred bucks for. That’s it…
Thanks for the “wonderful” example code and “helpful” tutorials. Not.
[quote=“remotestidea”]Yeah, fortunately, I had been playing with arduino boards for a couple of months before I got sparki. Saw the stuff about comms ports and thought, yep, been there (prior frustration), done that.
The documentation is a bit sparse and some code described on the website has not been implemented yet. This is definitely what they call the “bleeding edge”.
As a bot though, it’s got a LOT of potential and I hope the developers are getting stuck into preparing tutorials and filling in code holes. I think it’s such a neat package it’s going to get quit a lot of folk contributing code examples and fixes, all a bit hard to track and deal with if you’re pushed for implementation time.[/quote]
True, but there is a wee bit of difference between “bleeding edge” and uploading broken code to their website as a “tutorial” or “example” in their application.
I can’t very well teach kids to use the robot if I can’t get it to work in the first place. As adults, we can appreciate “potential” in the abstract, but when first showing this robot to kids, I just need some quick simple exercises THAT WORK to pique their interest.
Configuring COM ports is NOT a good way to draw kids into robotics. >:(
Then you should have purchased a Lego Mindstorms.[/quote]
You have no idea what kids are like, do you.
So what you’re saying is that if I want a product that WORKS I should have gotten a Mindstorm, but if I want a product that does NOT work and that I have to FIX before I can even use it, then Sparki is the way to go?
Wow, they’ll sell billions of these with that attitude.
[quote=“pudgimelon”][quote=“remotestidea”]
Configuring COM ports is NOT a good way to draw kids into robotics. >:([/quote][/quote]
I like to disagree here. If you want to do robotics you should know about COM ports. You should also learn a lot of other things.
And if you want to teach a kid the teacher (which is - I guess - you) should also know these things. The web is not lacking Arduino tutorials - go and read them. They all apply to Sparki as well.
Learning is about trying and failing and not about getting it handed on a silver platter. Throwing a tantrum because you failed on your first try is childish. How about posting your problems here and asking for help?
Having said that I think that Arcbotics could do a better job at providing instructions about the basics. But I guess they were busy getting the hardware out. Patience and time will probably help.
P.S.: my Sparki worked out of the box and I even checked the RGB example for you: yes, works too and it is not a brick.
This response is so fundamentally wrong that I’m searching for a way to answer it… ugh.
Look, I’m going to give you a classroom full of ten year olds, and I want you to say to them: “Hey kids, today we’re going to learn about robots with this cool little robot I have here. BUT FIRST we’re going to dive into the exciting world of configuring COM ports, editing registries, and googling for code fixes. Woo-hoo!”
Let’s see how well that goes for you, mm-kay?
We seem to be coming at this from very different viewpoints. Should kids learn about COM ports and editing their registry and command-line coding? Of course!! Absolutely! But in the first lesson? Clearly you haven’t taught in a classroom before. I need to engage their attention with a few demonstrations and some simple examples before we get knee-deep in mucking around with the device manager (and quite frankly, would you really want a classroom full of kids to be messing around with device settings? As a former sys-admin the thought of that sends shivers down my spine).
I’m looking for an INTRODUCTION into robotics. I’m not trying to give 10 year olds a degree in Computer Science. Get it?
What do you think I was doing? I was going through the tutorials on their website and they bricked my robot! Now you’re suggesting that I just spend the rest of my day googling for answers on other, general-purpose Arduino websites, because the arcbotics website doesn’t have answers about their own product? And you don’t see this as a problem?
Oh boy…
I’m not expecting a silver platter and I’m not throwing a tantrum. This is text, you understand that, right? I can TYPE IN CAPS for emphasis, but that doesn’t mean I’m actually shouting or frothing in rage. You know that, right? I’m pissed and annoyed, and I have every right to express disappointment in a product. Or are we only allowed to be sunshine and rainbows here?
There is a very, very big difference between expecting a “silver platter” and expecting a working product!! Would you buy a car if they told you that you had to edit the car’s ignition software before it would start? Would you buy a phone if you had to open the case and solder the wires back together before making a call?
In other words, it is not too much to ask to have a working product straight out of the box. And it is certainly not too much to ask that the software I download from the maker of that product doesn’t accidently brick my bot.
Do I (and my students) want to figure things out for ourselves? YES! OF COURSE we do!! But we want to figure out how to make the robot DO things, not figure out how to make it work in the first place. Again, this is supposed to be an introductory product!
I agree with you there. However, that is the source of my disappointment and hence the source of my ranting post here. Getting the hardware out while neglecting the curriculum and tutorials that make it worth purchasing is a serious oversight. Earlier today I had an LED-blinking BRICK as a result of that oversight. That is not the kind of out-of-the-box any company wants its customers to have.
Lucky you.
Look, when I posted my rant, I was almost certain that the source of the problem was a hardware conflict between my Windows 8.1 Surface Pro and the Sparki’s board. After plugging it into an older Windows machine, I was able to upload code and get the thing moving again. Yayyyyyyy!
That still doesn’t change my point. The code that I was able to upload is still broken and I had to puzzle out fixes. There’s no “reset” code on the website to return the Sparki to it’s default-out-of-the-box state. There appears to be some serious issues with the servo and gripper code in the library (it doesn’t shut off, so it keeps trying to turn or open/close, creating a loud grinding noise). To say the tutorials are sparse is an understatement. There’s no curriculum (as promised), no lesson plans, no unit plans, etc…
So while the product was delivered, whoop-de-doo. It’s almost unusable in it’s current state (to a teacher at least). This stuff should have been sorted out BEFORE they shipped the Sparkis. In their rush to get them out the door, they neglected a key component: tutorials & working code examples.
When they mentioned “drag-and-drop” programming, I envisioned a simple interface like MIT’s Scratch programming language. I’ve taught kindergartens how to code with Scratch it’s that simple. And yet when I unbox Sparki, I find that I’m dealing with COM ports and googling for bug fixes and other nonsense that I haven’t had to do with a piece of software in FIFTEEN YEARS.
To condense it down: the IDE seems not to work with Windows 8.1 on a SurfacePro. Bad. Why wasn’t your first post: ‘Sparkiduino doesn’t work with Windows 8.1 on a SurfacePro. Heres the error message/steps to reproduce the problem.’?
That might have been a faster way to solve your problem.
I do think your expectations were not in line with what Arcbotics was offering, hence your frustrations.
I never expected a curriculum right at the start. This is brand new hardware and a cool little robot to bring to the classroom - which is what I’m planning to do. But it’s just the hardware for now. The rest comes later, and will be - at least partially - developped by people like you and I.
When the first version of Lego Mindstorm got out, the ecosystem wasn’t what it is today. People jumped in and developped “stuff”. The Raspberry Pi came pretty naked too, and now we have Kano coming soon. That’s just the way things work.
Sparki is a cool toy for the classroom. But it’s just out right now, and it’s going through growing pains.
@ everybody: In general, I agree with a lot of what everyone is saying. I’m new to Arduino & programming in general. This is a steep learning curve for me. Could it have come with a clearer learning path/plan?..absolutely. I was frustrated at a lot of stuff. I didn’t expect that it would be perfect. But…I do think that the start guide should have been prepped a lot better.
Arcbotics were/are targeting this as a way into robotics & Arduino - by default you shouldn’t need to know anything about it. By the the same token, they aren’t obliged, nor should be expected, to teach us everything. But, with a solid guide in place for where to start, we (and especially novices like me) could then become aware of what we don’t know & subsequently need to learn. And, as said by someone else earlier, there’s a lot of info on the web that is pertinent to Sparki.
I want to believe that Arcbotics are going to make this right. It’s in their best interest & I don’t think they want more negativity following their disastrous lack of communications between the end of the Kickstarter campaign & the deliveries. Roboalchemist is fairly active on the forum and making a good start by being very helpful.
Now can we all just have a virtual handshake, stop attacking people, & move on. I for one am here to learn. And if by some fluke that I can actually solve someone else’s issue I will help out.
Let’s write some code, solve some problems & enjoy this cute, flawed little monster.
[quote=“poesel”]All this text - and I actually read it.
To condense it down: the IDE seems not to work with Windows 8.1 on a SurfacePro. Bad. Why wasn’t your first post: ‘Sparkiduino doesn’t work with Windows 8.1 on a SurfacePro. Heres the error message/steps to reproduce the problem.’?
That might have been a faster way to solve your problem.[/quote]
Because that was only one aspect of the problem, and I already knew the likely answer so I didn’t need help solving it. I wasn’t looking for help. I was giving negative customer feedback.
Obviously you did not do your research before you bought the product. Being an educator that should have been your first step. Ask the manufacturer exactly what the product does and details of its capability. This is a an Arduino based product, I knew that when I bought mine. I expected to go through the setups that an Arduino based unit would have and the way it is programmed. I’m assuming that you bought only one of the unit, so learn as much of it and if your stock with a problem use the Forum to ask for help, not gripe. You’re not helping others. Welcome to open-source!!!
There are some good points here, and this being the first week the product has been released to a general audience, are rapidly addressing. All code issues should be resolved in the next update in a few days, and the tutorials and guides are being expanded constantly. We’re more than happy to take suggestions. As has been said, we’ve been focusing on the hardware up until this point, as we can’t change that once it ships. Based on reactions, we’ve done a good job on that. Now we want to meet the same expectations for rest of it.
You keep mentioning COM ports over and over again. We agree that there should not be any knowledge presumed on COM ports. That is why there is no configuring of COM ports. They come configured, there is no configuration involved. The only thing required of the user is to select which one Sparki is on, just like the single click it takes in the step-by-step picture guide. Most of the time there is only one option to select. We piloted Sparki with a full class of ~10 year olds, and none of them had issues with this. We just have to guess that this is knee-jerk reaction to the old days of how horrible COM ports were, and not based on usage of Sparki.
Registry edits? Googling command line? We’re honestly very confused about these. How did this came about? Do you have any more details? We’ve never heard of anyone else having to do any of this. We are more interested in what your specific problem is, and how we can help solve it. We haven’t even been able to help you with this yet. We don’t even know why it’s bricked, what you’ve tried, or what problems you had, or anything. Hardware and tutorials are part of the equation, but so is support, which we are more than willing to provide, just let us. Our documentation and tutorials are shaped by these experiences, and we are constantly updating them as a result. If you have a problem, please talk to us, and then it shows up in the documentation.
The curriculum you’re asking about is being created with teacher support through our pilot program, working personally one on one with everyone that’s hinted they’re a teacher to us, and being released as it is developed with them. We’ve talked about this pilot program in the kickstarter updates. We understand would be hard to create truly good curriculum without working with them, and that’s hard to do if Sparki isn’t released. It also wouldn’t be unfair to all other backers to hold their finished Sparkis on a shelf in a warehouse for months while we write every last document.
Again, please let us solve your issues. We’re responding to everyone’s questions, and incorporating them into our guides. This is the first week, and we’re working to make sure these issues to last much longer than this. We want to make this the best experience for everyone involved, especially our early project backers.
[quote=“CleoQc”]I do think your expectations were not in line with what Arcbotics was offering, hence your frustrations.
I never expected a curriculum right at the start. This is brand new hardware and a cool little robot to bring to the classroom - which is what I’m planning to do. But it’s just the hardware for now. The rest comes later, and will be - at least partially - developped by people like you and I.
When the first version of Lego Mindstorm got out, the ecosystem wasn’t what it is today. People jumped in and developped “stuff”. The Raspberry Pi came pretty naked too, and now we have Kano coming soon. That’s just the way things work.
Sparki is a cool toy for the classroom. But it’s just out right now, and it’s going through growing pains.[/quote]
Well I did expect a curriculum at the start, or at the very least a rough outline of some lessons and a unit plan. Instead all we get is a sparse collection of random tutorials that include broken snippets of code.
I was under the impression that this thing had been extensively tested in the classroom. I am very curious who is part of that “global community of educators” they mentioned on their box. Likewise, they mentioned “drag and drop” coding, which Sparkiduino is most definitely NOT.
A hundred dollars is a lot to spend on a “cute little classroom toy”, so quite frankly, I expected more. Hence my disappointment.
I would be more forgiving if they’d clearly stated this was a beta product and the resources for it were not fully developed. But I logged into their website expecting to find robust classroom support (as advertised!!!) and I was sorely disappointed with what I found.
The box says “9+” but clearly nobody at Arcbotics has put this device in front of an actual teacher of nine year olds. If they had, they’d probably have gotten the same earful of complaints I am giving them now, because I DO teach nine year olds. In fact, I brought the sparki to a private lesson I had tonight at the home of two boys (one 10, the other 14). The fourteen year old was tolerant of the time it took us to get the sparki installed on his computer and he didn’t mind mucking around with the Arduino code. The 10 year old was bored stiff. I had already taught both boys to code in Scratch, and they both enjoyed that application. In fact, the 10 year old made a huge CYOA game in Scratch that had animation, music and multiple plotline, so he is not a low attention span kid and he likes coding.
The problem was there was no way to quickly grab his interest and entice him to learn more. Ten year olds don’t have the same patience for “set-up” as teenagers do. Any classroom teacher would have pointed this out to Arcbotics, so my guess is that they either didn’t ask or didn’t get the job done before the robots got shipped. Either way it is still disappointing.
And even though the teenager was engaged, he still asked questions like, “How do I know which COM port it’s using?” Now, to a non-educator, that may seem like a perfectly fine question, but to anyone who actually teaches kids it’s NOT. Am I supposed to stop a lesson on ROBOTICS and go off on a tangent about device managers, ports and other computer science topics? Maybe. But in the first lesson? No. Even the brightest teenager is going to go into a coma if we start googling bug fixes just to get the code to upload properly right out of the box.
It comes down to a matter of perspective, I think. The people behind this project (and many people on these forums judging by some of the snide comments I’ve received) are coming at this from a viewpoint of experience with technology, Arduino and hobbyist robotics. So my complaints may seem “stupid” in their eyes.
But I have a different set of priorities. I’m busy enough already. I don’t want to be writing tutorials for every product I buy. I have exams to grade and lessons to teach, I don’t have the hours to invest on scouring the internet for general-purpose Arduino resources that may or MAY NOT apply to Sparki. So it’s the simple, “common sense” things that really bother me, because they really highlight the fact that this product was released without much input from non-technology people.
For example:
Why do I have to configure the board when setting up Sparkiduino? To a tech guy, it might seem “common sense” to leave that open in case someone wants to use Sparkiduino for other devices, but to a non-tech person, it makes NO SENSE. Sparki is the first and ONLY Arduino device I will probably ever buy. So why do I care if there are fifty different versions of an Arduino board out there? Why would I even want to know that? Is this a “cute classroom toy” or not???
Likewise, the “tutorials” don’t mention the fact that when data is uploaded to Sparki, it erases the previous information that was on the robot’s card. That might seem super-obvious to a tech guy, but to a non-tech guy, I still expected the remote control to work. Why would THAT get deleted? More than anything else, that really pissed me off. Didn’t they talk to anyone before shipping this product?
I think they were so focused on getting the boxes shipped that they lost track of what would happen once people opened them. Look at the recent topics on these forums, they are mostly pleas for help with errors, driver problems and bugs. Again, if this was a beta, that’d be no big deal. But this is supposed to be the FINAL product and in my mind, final includes the tutorials and curriculum we were promised.
As for US (you and me) writing tutorials, I just have this to say: wouldn’t it be much easier to write tutorials for the robot if it ACTUALLY WORKED?? I’ve had the robot for a few days now and all I’ve done with it was try to hunt down bugs in their code and configure ports & USB drivers so I can actually upload code to the robot. You say that’s part of the growing pains, but I call BS on that. A rough outline and a basic tutorial isn’t too much to ask right off the bat.
I’m willing to contribute in a small way to knowledge base around this product, but I am NOT willing to debug their code, fix their install issues, design their curriculum, write their lesson plans and build their FAQ. That kind of work ain’t free, and I don’t appreciate any company that tries to offload those costs onto its community without meeting us halfway by at least giving us something to START WITH.
It was a Kickstarter. I “bought” into based on what they said they could do (drag-in-drop programming, out-of-the-box robotics, etc…). What programming language they intended to use is irrelevant. This is supposed to be an ENTRY-LEVEL product, so I would not expect the same level of set-up as a normal, Arduino environment would require.
BTW, Open-source does not equal “dump your support costs onto your customers”.
Oh and by the way, griping on a forum is a perfectly legit use of a community resource. It lets the company know of discontent and makes them aware of problems that they need to address. Simply asking for help on a piecemeal basis does NOT solve the problem for everyone. Unless you’re suggesting that the ideal consumer experience would be: 1) Open box, 2) Visit website, 3) Follow tutorial, 4) Brick your robot, 5) Swallow your frustration and annoyance and meekly ask for help on the forums so as not to offend anybody.
George, please tell us what issues you had. We want your contributions, we hear frustrations, but we can’t solve frustrations unless we know the issue you had. Please let us know.
We ran a two-month pilot class before we even launched Sparki. Pictures are right on the kickstarter page.
The teachers in our current pilot program, who are getting their Sparkis shortly. We’re happy to include you if you’d like.
Which is Minibloq, which is coming out this week, we’re just finishing the basic guides. Most people haven’t even received their Sparkis yet.
Explanations are not excuses. I understand perfectly why the tutorials are sparse and the example code is buggy, but that doesn’t alter my disappointment.
You need to understand that first impressions are important, and you’re making a bad one right now. Even if it meant holding off you shipment of the units for a week or two, you should have given your website a long, hard look before those robots ever left your building.
I’m not suggesting you needed to have a perfectly polished curriculum online in your first week (even though your box and website clearly suggest that you do). But what I am saying is that you should have put more thought into it than just throwing up a bunch of random nonsense, calling them “tutorials”, pairing them with coding engine that has broken example code, and then hoping we’ll do all the QA work for you.
You want me to be your beta tester, fine. Just tell me about it beforehand so I go into it with my eyes open.
Mostly because I’m just flabbergasted that I would even need to tell your application which port Sparki is on. Seriously, is this 1992?
But more to the point, it’s a major headache. Sometimes Sparki is on COM8, sometimes its on COM6, sometimes on COM4, sometimes I see TWO COM8’s and sometimes I only see COM1. Did I pick the right one? I don’t know, let me just go into my Device Manager, click on properties and check. Gee, won’t that be fun to explain to a 10 year old…
And if I happen to pick the wrong COM port, Sparkiduino will either stall out and do nothing (after compiling) or it’ll give some odd message about maybe I don’t have Leonardo or butterfly something or other on my computer. What am I supposed to do with that information? Could you make your error messages MORE opaque please?
Spoken like a true nerd. Don’t take that the wrong way. I get what you’re saying, but you don’t “get” that what you’re saying is nonsensical to a non-nerd. I consider myself to be a nerd-medium of sorts. I speak your language and I have dwelt in your lands, but I also travel amongst the human folks and I’m here to speak on their behalf.
Yeah, I get it. Selecting a “COM port” is super-obvious, but my mom still replies to emails from mailer-daemon so try saying that same sentence to her and see if you don’t get a blank stare in reply.
And therein lies the root of your problem, I’m betting. YOU piloted a Sparki in a class of 10 year olds. How many years of experience do you have with computers and Arduino? If you handed it off to teachers, did you help them install it and give them tips?
Try this experiment: Go to a random 5th grade classroom, give a Sparki to a teacher, tell her she has a day to prepare a lesson for it. Then come back the next day, and see what she accomplishes in that first lesson. Don’t give her any advice, don’t help her install it on her notebook, don’t say anything if she encounters problems. Just hand her the box, step back and observe.
I’m betting that you’ll get a radically different result from when you “piloted” a Sparki yourselves.
Nope. It’s a reaction based on you coming at this from the viewpoint of a tech guy and me coming at this from the viewpoint of a layman (I’m not, but I can feel their pain).
Here. Just go to the Scratch website. Download their “Getting Started” pdf and then compare it to what you offer.
Then tell me again how I’m just jerking-my-knee here.
Your tutorials are woeful and that’s being kind. If I wasn’t a teacher, I’d be using profanities to describe what you’ve uploaded to your website to help people “get started”.
I don’t think you have a true grasp of what “entry level” means. It does NOT mean spending several days googling around for Arduino resources on OTHER websites just so I and fix bugs in YOUR code.
Well, that’s what you get when you tell people there are “plenty of Arduino resources on the web” to find solutions to their problems. How do I know which one of them will address my problem? Is it a USB problem on my machine? A faulty driver on yours? An operating system incompatibility? Who knows? Could be anything. So just imagine your average layman trying to slug through all that noise to trail-and-error a solution to a problem that YOUR code on YOUR website created?
Is frustration an added feature now?
Excellent. That’s the main point of my rant: to help shape those tutorials through this experience.
I may be harsh in my criticism, but I do wish you guys well. I’m disappointed and I expected better, but I’ve not given up yet. Hopefully my experience and feedback will help you to improve the experience of future customers. True, it is strongly negative feedback, and that may be hard to hear, but I hope you listen to me and find the value in what I’m saying.
For example, PLEASE for the love of god, put a "Sparki default’ code snippet online and in your application’s examples. That way, if someone does “brick” their machine like I did, they can return it to normal and start over. That’ll at least give me a remote controlled toy the kids can play with while I figure out what went wrong.
Secondly, make sure you TELL people that when they upload example code to the Sparki, the original code will be lost. Again that might be obvious to a tech guy, but to a non-tech person, it’s a bit disconcerting to learn that uploading a RGB program just made the remote inoperable. That is a non-intuitive thing, and so you need to let people know it’s going to happen BEFORE they try your tutorials.
Third, make sure you FIX the broken code in your examples. Yes, I want to teach my kids problem-solving, but NOT with the example code. Example code should be an example of what WORKS. It’s the little things like this that really matter. For example, in the Remote code, it says “GREEN” and “RED” instead of “RGB_GREEN” and “RGB_RED”, so that code will throw an error if you try to compile it. Likewise, the “Wall Avoidance” code is incomplete and doesn’t move the robot forward and doesn’t loop through the sensor ping.
Throwing half-done stuff like that up on your website is just sloppy. It makes you look amateurish. So please make fixing those things a priority. I used to work for a major computer game company, so I’ve experienced the wrath of customers pissed off by annoy little bugs firsthand, so I can speak from experience. You do NOT want to go down that road. You’d be better off removing everything from your website for a few days until you get the code and application cleaned up.
Giving people busted code is a betrayal of trust and most won’t forgive you for it.
Yeah, I thought about biting on that, but you’ve got to understand one thing about teachers. The defining characteristic of a teacher is BUSY. My time is extremely valuable to me. So I don’t take kindly to it being wasted.
You put “entry level” and “ideal for education” on your box and I’m going to get very annoyed when a few hours after I open the box, I find myself googling for help on random Arduino websites (especially since I’d never even heard of Arduino until I bought your robot).
Where’s the “drag and drop” coding environment you promised? Please don’t tell me that your current Sparkiduino application qualifies as entry level, because I know college students who would struggle to grasp that app. (Trust me, I tutor college kids in Python and they’re totally useless at it. This isn’t much different.)
Entry-level means teaching CONCEPTS not coding language. Again I direct you to Scratch for a near-perfect example of a proper “entry-level” experience. If you say “drag and drop” that is what most people are going to envision. So don’t say those words unless you intend to deliver that experience.
Me too, actually. Hence the rant. Believe it or not, I want you guys to do well and I’m aware that this is the “first week” some bumps are to be expected.
You funded a successful kickstarter and got the product out the doors. Congrats on that. It’s an achievement worthy of praise. But you dropped the ball on the tutorials and knowledge base. Own up to that and pick the ball back up again.
Some other people mentioned that you didn’t communicate enough during the production phase between funding and delivery. The problems I describe with your website are also a communications problem. So perhaps you need to reflect for a moment on that and consider hiring a community engineer. As a small business owner myself, it took me a long time to admit that I couldn’t be good at everything. I had to hire other people to deal with the necessary tasks that I found tiresome and boring. Somewhere out there, you’ll find a person who would make a great liaison between your nerd-hobbyists and your lay-teachers.
Heck, hire an intern to do it. They work for peanuts, literally
I have read all of the posts on this thread and I do not understand your frustration. You funded a project on a Kickstarter. A web page that raises money for start up projects. I have funded a couple of projects I am not a know it all on what is a good project to fund but I do know where to set my expectations. You would have been better served to purchase a consumer robot. That I believe would have better met your expectations and if not you could have taken it back to Target. The rest of the supporters of ArcBotics would like to get on with the tasks at hand. Those would be to help one another and ArBotics develop what will be an extremely effective learning tool. If you can take a breath and ask for help you will find that the company that you funded will work very hard to get you up and running.
