How To section?

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@leader21 May be the search function can be improved?! There are several search plugins available as far as I know. It may also help to provide some hints on how to do special searches, e.g. combining several search terms with “AND”. The normal search just does “OR”.

@mwittig
the functions of the forum needs to be changed by @sweetpi himself since he fixed something at the code of nodebb afaik.

@leader21 said:

Hm… We could have a forum where we can post specific questions to certain devices. Also we could post example devices for to copy/paste to the config.json
But what would be different to the actual hardware forum then?
Imho we should feed the supported devices threat of @sweebee with more input. There are many more devices compatible with pimatic. http://forum.pimatic.org/topic/35/supported-devices

Difference is that in my case i use Pimatic to get some data from another device.
I requested a url with pimatic-log-reader to read out the usage and counters of my smart meter reader.
Personally i would not put that under supported devices but in a how to.

@PietjeNL

ok, understood.
well, logreader is a very specific device.
the problem at logreader devices is to find the correct match imho.
for that, there are some good tools and howto pages on the web.
logreader has already had some threats here at the forum.

@leader21

Indeed is finding the correct match allot of work.
That why it would be easier if they can find a how to section so new users doesn’t have to find out everything them self but can start with the information other people put in a how to.
This will make the acceptation of Pimatic for new users more easy.

Would make it like:
How to: Readout the Plugwise Smile P1
And the put all information on how to readout the data.

@PietjeNL would you like me to make a how to of all the chats we had in the last couple of weeks ?

I think i would be use full to keep the “How To” Section as up to date as possible but there are so many hardware components and not everybody wants/likes to make an how to.

When i was trying to read the log of my plugwise i got a lot of information from this post : http://forum.pimatic.org/topic/85/read-data-from-smart-meter-using-p1-usb-cable

That post together with some painful brains to make the match got me into the right direction to made it work.

@Sjeff said:

would you like me to make a how to of all the chats we had in the last couple of weeks

good idea!! appreciate it

@leader21

Thats gonna be a loooooooong how to

i will try and make something out of it when i got some time to spare.

@leader21

I already started on the first part of the how to.

Is it possible to start a new topic in the How to section? (http://forum.pimatic.org/category/18/howto-pimatic)

Looks like its an Moderator/Admins only section on the forum…

Yes its a mod only forum. Want to keep it clean.
Go ahead with your howto. I will add it then to the howtos.

@leader21
Can you move the Howto?
http://forum.pimatic.org/topic/522/howto-read-plugwise-smile-p1-with-pimatic

@sjeff @PietjeNL
just created a new “Howto Devices” forum and moved it there.
at the moment it’s within the general discussion forum aside of the “Howto Pimatic” forum.
this forum has read/write permissions for everybody.
hope this will be filled with some nice threats

and thank you for your nice work sjeff !!

@leader21
Thanks for moving the topic

Super guys, this is exactly what i mean
Maybe a good idea to make it read only for people, they can always use chat to ask the author for more information.

May be it is possible to make the “HowTo section” more visible for new users. In the beginning when I started with pimatic I did not notice the HowTo topic. It’s a pity as the articles are excellent @leader21

Why not mentioning the “How to section” as part of the Getting Started guide?

@mwittig
thanks a lot appreciate it !!
i moved the howto section to the start page of the forum, so it’s visible immediately.
that’s all i can do for now.
maybe @sweetpi can point to the forum and the howtos at the getting started guide.