Help us create some guides, with incentives!

[Ragnarok 198]

Hi everyone! We're nearly ready to stand up our Guides section and wanted to put feelers out to see who would be interested in creating guides for the community to use. We need people who are willing to thoroughly document the set up and use of a system (i.e. home automation solution) or advanced functionality. Here are some guidelines (pun intended) to follow when creating your guides!

• Guides should be written for those who are not technically inclined
• Guides should be step-by-step and very easy to follow
• Guides should contain screenshots when necessary
• Guides should contain links to official documentation when necessary and available
• All variables should be <standardized> so that they stand out easily, and they should be properly explained at the beginning of the guide

Everyone who contributes a well-written and easy to follow guide will be given a Production Designer membership! This membership removes all download restrictions, and will be good for a minimum of 6 months, and a maximum of however long you are contributing guides, content or even wisdom to the community! If you stay active in the community, your Production Designer status will not expire.

Here's a small style template to use as an example when creating your guides.

	Text Style
Heading 1	Heading Name
Heading 2	Heading Name
Heading 3	Heading Name
Body	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Variable	<variable_name>

Thanks for participating, and please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. We'll refine these instructions as needed. If you're interested in posting a guide, post below with the subject matter you're interested in creating a guide for.

[kenelbow 1]

How broad do the guides have to be? I figured out how to set the level on my dimmer switches using SmartThings but can't do much beyond that. So my guide would only be for a particular use case. 

I'm not a developer so I relied on the help of others within the Smart Things and its not really my own work, but I could certainly combine all the the things I learned into one guide.

[Ragnarok 198]

4 hours ago, kenelbow said:

How broad do the guides have to be? I figured out how to set the level on my dimmer switches using SmartThings but can't do much beyond that. So my guide would only be for a particular use case. 

I'm not a developer so I relied on the help of others within the Smart Things and its not really my own work, but I could certainly combine all the the things I learned into one guide.

We'd need you (or someone) to put together a guide outlining how to set up SmartThings, and then we'd link some action files to the guide to make it easier for folks. Really, any information you could give would be helpful to someone. The more screenshots and in depth, the better!

[block134 8]

I don't really have much time to help write a guide but I can help with reviewing, editing, and formatting if needed.

[Ragnarok 198]

18 minutes ago, block134 said:

I don't really have much time to help write a guide but I can help with reviewing, editing, and formatting if needed.

That would be really, really helpful. Most of the time, I don't have these systems so I can't check my work. I'm also open to people suggesting guides they want to see!

[Synthesis 2]

I'm no stranger to Cinema Experience, but CinemaVision is new to me (and I was absof***inglutely THRILLED to discover it recently)...

I already have my membership (paid the big one... Wife wasn't happy) so I can't contribute much there...

 

What I CAN contribute is writing documentation... I'm an IT Systems Administrator for a living, and I write a LOT of documentation for my employees.

I'd be OK with doing up some documentation on the sequences and whatnot.. I have no programming experience, so anything delving into the code of the sequence files themselves would be difficult for me, but they look like they are relatively easy to understand.

 

Do you have a Wiki setup on the site? Something that has a ToC at the top and is searchable to allow things to be broken down into steps?

[Ragnarok 198]

12 hours ago, Synthesis said:

I'm no stranger to Cinema Experience, but CinemaVision is new to me (and I was absof***inglutely THRILLED to discover it recently)...

I already have my membership (paid the big one... Wife wasn't happy) so I can't contribute much there...

 

What I CAN contribute is writing documentation... I'm an IT Systems Administrator for a living, and I write a LOT of documentation for my employees.

I'd be OK with doing up some documentation on the sequences and whatnot.. I have no programming experience, so anything delving into the code of the sequence files themselves would be difficult for me, but they look like they are relatively easy to understand.

 

Do you have a Wiki setup on the site? Something that has a ToC at the top and is searchable to allow things to be broken down into steps?

We get that a lot...  Thanks for becoming a supporting member, it goes a long way towards being able to pay for the next round of development! Sorry about the wife, mine wasn't too happy with me either. You've already contributed money, so contributing anything else is extra awesome of you and very much appreciated!

I've been trying to pound out guides the past several days and will be opening up the Guides section on the website shortly. There's not too much there at the moment, but it will grow. Anything you can contribute there would be helpful. You don't need programming experience for it at all. We want to build guides so that anyone who wants to can follow them. I'm working on one called Understanding Modules & Sequences right now.

We don't have a Wiki, but @Matt put together a great Guides section for us that is a bit like this one. We will of course be tweaking it along the way.

[block134 8]

On 1/20/2016 at 6:34 PM, Ragnarok said:

That would be really, really helpful. Most of the time, I don't have these systems so I can't check my work. I'm also open to people suggesting guides they want to see!

Let me know what you need and when, happy to help!!

[mccorkled 7]

We have a travel blog that we are starting to write some technology guides on. It would be cool if we could direct some traffic over there off of our guide posted here.

[Ragnarok 198]

16 hours ago, mccorkled said:

We have a travel blog that we are starting to write some technology guides on. It would be cool if we could direct some traffic over there off of our guide posted here.

You're welcome to link anywhere you want as long as it doesn't end up on a less than reputable site (porn, malware, etc). Feel free to link back to CinemaVision, too!

[mccorkled 7]

When the guides section is up, I will be sure to post them.

[ronj 2]

I can write a guide on integrating CinemaVision with HomeAssistant. This opens a door of possibilities with regards to automation since HomeAssistant, like OpenHAB, can be the gateway for interacting with other platforms.