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One of the things that blog post makes me realize is that we don't have instruction manuals that are intended for a technical audience anymore. The odds of seei
by jfim 5y ago
One of the things that blog post makes me realize is that we don't have instruction manuals that are intended for a technical audience anymore. The odds of seeing an instruction manual with pinouts for connectors and voltage levels are pretty much nil nowadays.
- ryukafalz 5y agoInstruction manuals, interface documentation… yeah, modern devices are treated like black boxes. Say you go buy a Fitbit, is the manufacturer going to tell you how the protocol works to communicate with it? No, they’re going to give you an app, that may or may not track usage data, and that they can decide to stop supporting whenever they want. If you want to write your own, you’ll have to reverse-engineer it.
- jfim 5y ago> Say you go buy a Fitbit, is the manufacturer going to tell you how the protocol works to communicate with it? No, they’re going to give you an app, that may or may not track usage data, and that they can decide to stop supporting whenever they want. If you want to write your own, you’ll have to reverse-engineer it. I agree 100%. Wouldn't it be nice if protocol documentation was mandatory? I understand why it's done this way (because 99% of consumers wouldn't care and it allows them to change the protocol later), but it's really annoying to have to reverse engineer everything. It's funny too, I bought a fitness device a few years back (Lumo lift by Lumobody tech) and the app doesn't work since the company got acquired by another. If there was documentation, someone might have stepped up and written a replacement app or something to connect to the device. At this point, this kind of puts me off from buying any kind of hardware tech from a startup that might not be around for a few years, since it might just turn up to be another tech paperweight.
- marcodiego 5y ago> Wouldn't it be nice if protocol documentation was mandatory? Totally agree. This should be law.
- Shared404 5y agoIndeed. Consumers in general may not care - but imagine if every device that's currently a black box could instead have competitors and an ecosystem build up around it. I wish we lived in that world.
- ryukafalz 5y ago> At this point, this kind of puts me off from buying any kind of hardware tech from a startup that might not be around for a few years, since it might just turn up to be another tech paperweight. Same. The vast majority of peripherals meant to be used with mobile phones I just wont buy at this point, because they’re almost all like this. At least I know I’ll be able to use my Pebble or PineTime indefinitely; the former because it’s been reverse-engineered, and the latter because it’s open from the start. As appealing as the newer Fitbits are, I can’t say the same for them. > Wouldn't it be nice if protocol documentation was mandatory? Yeah - I’d love to see this, just like we’ve seen a push for repair documentation with recent right to repair legislation.
- EvanAnderson 5y agoOdds are that the communications protocol is part of a DRM system, too. In the U.S. that will make it illegal to reverse engineer without an exemption.
- reaperducer 5y agoBecause "documentation" isn't part of sprint or agile. Modern middle managers think documentation is a roadblock, not an asset. They're wrong.
- Karrot_Kream 5y agoI've never encountered middle managers who think this way. They'd be overjoyed if the engineers want to write documentation. Getting engineers to write docs on the other hand... sigh. Most engineers I've worked with don't even want to comment their code beyond the bare minimum and throw a temper tantrum when having to write more than a few sentences on a service they've written. Heck I know engineers who see another non-updated comment in the codebase and use that as justification to not write docs themselves.
- ewalk153 5y agoIt’s wonderful how Raspberry PI has restored this old tradition. I love that I can download the schematics for any board and that their site has a ready made guide to interface with the header pins. There is probably a market for x64 PCs that would let you build Linux from scratch and run it on hardware that is hackable. I’m not sure if licensing would permit this.
- rvense 5y agoI don't think there are complete schematics for the Raspberry Pi boards.