Hi Benny,
Thanks for the reply!
Actually I do not believe there is a single web page related to Cayenne
that has not malfunctioned for me in some manner. I am a total beginner
with this IoT concept, and need all the help I can get. I wanted to start
out with something simple. Being able to send a GPIO pin high or low from
my smartphone is a huge step toward the ideas I have for projects.
Eventually I may get more into the program code writing stage of this, but
since I am not fluent in code, nor in the workings of Linux Terminal, this
is all new stuff. I have done a little. And once I get things going I will
bring my older RPi with its Gertboard and many GPIO pins, and a relay board
I have for it, into the mix. It seems every time I embark in this direction
I hit very disappointing roadblocks, and get frustrated and sideline the
whole concept. I usually then forget most of what I have learned. My first
hurdle with Arduino a few years back was poorly written / not debugged /
not proof-read lessons and instructions. In no less than THREE books I
tried in succession. When you have no one to show you WHY something isn’t
working, and the author forges ahead blindly assuming everything works
perfectly, that ends in disaster.
So when it came out, I tried the Raspberry Pi, because it is much more
advanced, and far less dependent on low level code to make things go. Hit
the exact same lack-of-proofreading roadblocks, and general author
arrogance when I contacted them to clarify their information. I had thought
an electronic Kindle version of a book could be easily edited and corrected
when errors are reported. Not so. Sidelined again. Months later, I tried
the Pi-Top. I thought maybe with the keyboard, mouse, and display all in
one package things might get easier. And being it is directed toward young
students, I had hoped it would be higher quality in its support. Nothing
could have been further from the truth. I’ve shelved it in disgust twice
since getting it a year ago. Their tech support is agonizingly slow to
respond, always escalates you on the first response so you wait LONGER for
another reply from someone supposedly knowing more, then never solves your
issue. I’ve asked them repeatedly for a book or online source that lists
the answers to all of their puzzle-oriented programming lessons, so when I
am stumped I can look at what I am not seeing (which is actually a sign of
poor teaching), and yet they ignore my request, and claim they have
hundreds of Pi-Tops in schools of children. I can’t imagine how. Unless
their teachers are given the exact information I am asking for.
I’m close to shelving this hobby again, after failing to make my Pi-Top’s
RPi connect to a SparkFun IoT Beginners Kit Blynk board (again, poor
support…neither Blynk nor SparkFun can make it work) and now all these
web page malfunction issues with Cayenne.
I’ve gotten the furthest with Cayenne…able to connect my phone and
the Pi in the Pi-Top and switch on/off a GPIO pin. I want to learn more.
Like what kinds of sensors Cayenne supports, and what I can do with them.
But without the necessary web information working for me, I have no source
for that information. Once again, very frustrated.
I can’t ask for help with any specific project yet, because I can’t get far
enough into it to come up with a project. I need quality, full time
accessible information that I can read and tutorials I can try, that will
not fail me in the middle of that attempt. Sadly, I have yet to find that.
Regards,
Lawrence Gill
