PBP Book

[rhino]

Great idea Bruce! You're one of the few I could see creditable enough to undertake such a task. Although you mentioned that you don't want it to be a project book, it would be nice to sprinkle it with some small applications that make the reader think outside of the box, expose some of those features avialable with pics that a beginner would not normally think of. Examples from your website projects for example. Maybe not complete apps, but useable chunks that the reader can piece together and stimulate the brain. What is your target release date? Sign me up... looking forward to it!

[Melanie]

What I want to know, looking at everyone’s comments is “Where do you draw the line?”.

Now I’ll get seriously flamed for this (like I care), but I’ll say it anyway. The PICBasic manual as it stands is 90% of the way there. The other 10% is in your PICs Datasheet.

If you don’t know how to program in Basic – go to night school.

If you don’t know electronics – go get a course at your local college.

But what I see is folks tinkering with things they haven’t a clue about, asking others for help and then not understanding the answers they’re given. How do you connect a Matrix Keypad to your PIC? – well I can think of at least six different ways of doing it – including two completely different ways that use just one I/O pin for a whole 4x4 Matrix Keypad… how many examples will we put in the book?, because I’ll bet the one you don’t put in is the one somebody’s going to moan about that you haven’t got.

I’m sorry to say this Bruce, and please prove me wrong in a couple of years time, but you’ll end up writing a complete microprocessor electronics course encompassing everything from basic Ohms Law (ie how to calculate a potential divider so as not to overload your PICs input pins) through to why the slowest peripherals should be given the greatest interrupt priority (bet nobody on this list ever thought of that one!). Then after spending six months of your life on your publication, it’ll take a further sixty just to recoup the initial investment in time and money.

Go look at Heathkit Educational Courses… big binders full of basic but useful stuff (costing a fortune) but that’s exactly what it cost to produce. And to be really useful to everyone, that’s what it will end up as – you just won’t be able to do it for $19.95 and whilst a HTML/CD version is great, the instant you start selling it, it’ll be ripped-off and published for free somewhere on the net.

Back to my original question – “Where do you draw the line?”. Some time back a colleague of mine produced an excellent Accounts package for the PC. He was swamped with support calls with brainless questions like “What’s a Nominal Ledger?”, “What’s Depreciation?”, “What’s a Balance Sheet?”. Whilst his manual was great for setting up and using the product, he forgot that the users were totally inept, didn’t have a clue about Accounting and expected his product manual to be a complete Accounts Course.

In the same way, the PICBasic manual is a Product Manual and not a Programming Course. They provide you with information about a command or feature, and they make the assumption (perhaps wrong assumption) that you know what you’re doing. Which means any attempt to expand on that becomes a training course in programming and electronics.

Never mind Sleepless in Seattle, call me Cynical from London.

[BobK]

Hello,

I have to agree with Melanie on this. I have been learning for years. On Sunday mornings I sit at the keyboard and look at previous posts and have built a nice library of "How to do's" including the problems people have had and how it was resolved. I refer to the PBP manual as well as looking for someone else's comments on things.

I don't have a degree in programming or electronics but I do keep one comment in mind that Melanie stated some time ago, "It doesn't matter how it gets done, just as long as it works and that the customer is pleased with it when you're finished." I should also add that you should get paid well for what you did!

Yea, I'd like to see a better book, but every PIC book I got is the same, explaining the basic structure of the PIC, the instruction set, and a few applications. I have 3 books that I refer to frequently. But I spend hours working out the problems. I had one major problem last spring and I was aided by Charles from MELabs and Steve Collins. I have shared what I learned from these gentlemen several times with people on this forum.

I tried to buy Les Johnson's book in 2004 only to find that it didn't sell well, or so I was told. I finally got a copy from Melanie and I thought the book was great as it didn't take me back to the dinosaur age to explain where silicon came from. It just got right to the point and had examples in it. That's what I look for in a book. Beyond the basics. I also agree that many people that write to this forum are really in over their heads with their projects. I also follow a few other forums related to PICs and they are really about the same with questions from people just getting started.

To me this forum is all I need!!!!! Keep up the great work, everyone.

BobK

[Bruce]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I don't have a release date yet since this is obviously a work in progress. Just wanted to get some ideas & feedback before moving along with the book.

All valid points Melanie. Thanks. I don't have a single book with all the answers in my own library, but I do have a few out of some 700+ that I keep in front of me, and refer to often.

The majority of them sit on the shelf collecting dust, but occasionally get opened when I run into something not covered in the few I keep in front of me.

Honestly, I don't think it would ever be possible for anyone to put together a single book with "all" the answers, or even one that would leave every single person that read it 100% satisfied. But it's nice to have a resource like this list to bounce around a few ideas & get some feedback before publishing one.

[bartman]

I'd like to see a book that addresses your basic idea. If I could use your book for examples and then know more about reading the data sheets to make things work that in itself would be a nice resource. I also prefer the "feel of paper" over an electronic version if I'm using it as a reference.

I understand what Melanie is saying however for a hobbyist as myself I'm not gonig to be taking night classes to learn the finer points of programming. I stick to small projects and use what I can find on the Internet and questions I ask to learn more. The data sheets are overhwhelming when trying to learn. I've figured out some problems on my own by using the data sheets, but something to help explain themnow that would be nice.

Perhaps people are saying, indirectly, that this forum should only be for professionals and if you want to learn anything go to school, don't look for a book to help because it can never exist? I hope not.

Bart

[Melanie]

Funny you should mention it Bruce. There was once a book with ‘everything’ in it. I picked a (well used) copy up in a very peculiar antiquariat in a Tokyo backstreet a couple of years back. Yeah I know I spend too much time in peculiar city backstreets, but I’m that kind of girl. The book dates back to the early 1970’s (before my time I would add!!) and was one of the ‘secret’ books which made Japan a manufacturing giant. It contained ready made and tested circuits and designs for just about anything electrical/electronic of the time. If you were a manufacturer and decided to start making transistor radios, you opened the book, chose the number of transistors you wanted to use, and picked a ready working design. It didn't matter if you were an industrial giant like Sony, or a garden shed outfit like Tama Denki, all you needed to do was adjust the layout to your plastic case (in many instances a design had several layouts already configured for available plastic cases) and you were in business. Maybe that’s what’s needed now… “101 ready uses for a 10F200”.. duh…

[Melanie]

Perhaps people are saying, indirectly, that this forum should only be for professionals and if you want to learn anything go to school, don't look for a book to help because it can never exist? I hope not.

No, not at all Bart.

I went into the costings of a book about three/four years ago. It doesn't pay. In the length of time taken to write something really good, I could have banked $100k doing something else. Which is why authors regurgitate the same old stuff to fill their books with cheap content (like BobK's mention of "The Sex life of Silicon"). It fills pages fast, doesn't tax the brain cells and is easily copied and edited from other publications. However, it can also be argued, that if you don't know the basics, sooner or later you're going to come unstuck (see questions on this forum for prize examples).

This forum isn't for professionals. Count the number of QUESTIONS posted by Bruce or Darrel or others - in total, you won't fill the fingers of one hand. What do we have that YOU don't have? Absolutely nothing. We use the same PICs, the same Compilers, the same Assemblers, the same Manual, the same Datasheets and have the same Search Engines and Internet Access. We KNOW where to look in the PIC Datasheet - they're all laid out the same way. You've seen one, you've seen them all. And if you don't know, then Adobe Acrobat's got a SEARCH button.

On a personal basis, I use the forum for two reasons... For one it's a BUG ALERT. If there's a problem, I'd like to know about it before I waste my time. I don't know about you, but my time is money, and I'd rather not waste too much of it with a problem that somebody may have spotted before me. The other reason is the forum is a distraction. Sometimes when at my PC struggling with the days problems, it's good to switch off, grab a coffee and do something less taxing for a few minutes. I've lost count the number of times I've posted to the forum whilst some client or other is on the phone talking complete rubbish. It's good practice for later in life when we eventually get married and need to ignore the prattlings of ones spouse whilst doing something else.

But I do insist that people make the effort to learn. After 20,000 posts telling people to use CMCON=7, not reading the manual, not looking in the Documentation, not looking in the Datasheet, not using the forum SEARCH, not doing an Internet Search, it does become a struggle to actually bother answering some questions with the same old answers time and time again. Looking at some questions, we're heading fast towards "What's a Resistor and Why and When should I use it?". That's why I said folks should go to school.

If Bruce does eventually come out with a good book - buy it. If only for the simple reason is that he will have invested a huge chunk of his life in creating it.

[sayzer]

But I do insist that people make the effort to learn. After 20,000 posts telling people to use CMCON=7, not reading the manual, not looking in the Documentation, not looking in the Datasheet, not using the forum SEARCH, not doing an Internet Search, it does become a struggle to actually bother answering some questions with the same old answers time and time again.

For what Melanie says above, I would like to propose a simple solution (if it does not solve, at least can slow down). So that people who do not even care about learning can at least get into thinking of it.

Here_it_is:

During a new member registration, the forum system can ask couple of simple questions (like a short quiz). The questions should be related to both PBP and basic electronics. As the users will try finding answers from the Internet, the quiz will have a time to complete (ex: five minutes) and if the all is wrong, no registration takes place. GoTo Example

Next:
If the user comes back to register again, the questions appear to be different (and keeps doing it each time).

The idea of having this quiz is to have the prospective member find the answers online and prove right there that the answers of simple questions can be found by simple search just like the answers of relatively difficult questions can be found by extensive search.

Without doing this but rather posting a simple question to the forum is simply “I do not care, post it today and have it tomorrow. Someone will answer it anyway, why spend time searching…” kind of behavior. GoTo So


Example:
Tip: Use the forum search to find the answers.

Question1:
How to turn off comparator in 12F675
Three minutes.

a. I do not know.
b. CMCON = %00000111
c. CMCON = 2 1/2
d. ADCON1=%11000001
e. b and d

Question2:
What makes a difference?
10 seconds

a. Knowing that the size matters
b. Pulling a pin high instead of pulling it low.
c. Having a nonworking code work but later on realize that it actually does not.
d. All of the above
e. a and b except k
f. None of the above


Queston3:
How to pull a pin high?
One minute

etc..
…..

GoTo Next


So:
This is just an idea.
Melanie is the administrator and may come up with something much better if of course something like this would indeed be useful.

IF "wanna read this post again" THEN GoTo Here_it_is


----------------

For Bruce's idea, I think that if the target audience is the people who have very little experience but try learning from somewhere, then why the book should not make a difference for them? For such an audience, of course, the language in the book should be quite simple and the beginning of the issues should be quite near to the zero.


END

[DynamoBen]

Let’s not implement any type of "tests" for new members. Keep in mind some ppl are just looking and my not have ventured into picbasic yet, others are just starting out in the electronics/PIC world.

I know it isn't always fun to answer the same questions but sometimes that’s what ppl need. I know from my tech support days that sometimes you end up answering the same question hundreds of times, however its the first time that person has heard it.

Best bet is to keep things as they are, answer questions as they come in and gently remind new members about searching. Something else to consider, if someone is new they may not know what to search for.

Bruce I think your book an whatever format can be an asset to the community.