Improving the Wiki

Hello everyone. The Wiki hasn’t had much attention for a while and I’m thinking of spending some time on it over the next few weeks. I’ve messaged Roger with a few ideas which I might try to implement, and he’s suggested I get further opinions from the community.

My current proposals are:

• Consolidate the Maple Mini pages into one page
• Create a general page for all three pill boards (though I wouldn’t remove the existing pages)
• Bring the Maple Mini front and centre, as it’s the best board for new-comers
• Decorate and reorganise the main page, to really sell the platform to new users
• Add some more tutorials, particularly for bootloading and getting started
• Create a board comparison table to compliment that of the official Arduinos

But my general aim is to get the Wiki into a state where a new user can immediately get a feel for what this platform has to offer.

Any objections, suggestions and offers for help are welcome.

Thanks Benji

Those changes sound good to me.

Great idea Benji!

Something else that might be worth adding are mutual links from the forum to the wiki and vice versa.

Why not add to the forum header a permanent link to the wiki main page and in the wiki menu a an entry pointing to the forum? This would make it easier to switch from one side to the other – but even more important, all people “landing” via a search or a link on the forum (resp. wiki) would be made aware that these is a wiki (resp. forum).

Something else that might be worth adding are mutual links from the forum to the wiki and vice versa.

Agreed. I didn’t even know the Wiki existed until recently. It could use the extra footfall. There’s also a lot of mirrored sections/pages between the two sites which could be linked. I.e. a lot of Wiki pages which could do with “see this forum post for more info”.

I’ve just finished combining the three Maple Mini pages into one.

I think the boards page should be merged into the main page (and converted into a wikitable style table). I don’t see a reason for them to be separate.

Roger, would it be possible to enable .svg images in the Wiki? I’m working on some pinout diagrams and it would be nice to upload them in full quality.

Try it now.

Hopefully I added SVG, and didn’t break anything

Thanks Roger

Unfortunately, it looks like the wiki software is very fussy with .svg files, and won’t take ones such as mine (exported from draw.io). See this post
https://github.com/mgeb/mediawiki-drawi … r/issues/1
it doesn’t look like there’s much you can do about that, hopefully the developers over there will sort it out eventually.

Fortunately, I’ve found a work around. Here it is in case anyone else needs to upload draw.io diagrams:

1. Export the diagram as .html (not .svg)
2. Open the .html file with Inkscape and resave it as .svg
3. Upload that

OK

From what I recall I installed the latest version of MediaWiki when I first set it up.

I’m not sure if there have been any updates, but mediawiki administration is not at all slick, you have to hand edit the config files to make a lot of the changes

I can enable other file types if necessary

BTW.

Just one thing I noticed.
You are refering to the latest version of the bootloader as “Maple bootloader 2”. Although its an enhanced version of the Maple bootloader, I ended up calling it the Stm32duino bootloader, as soon as it would run on non maple hardware (https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/ … bootloader )
(thanks to work and enhancements by VictorPV – and others)

Also. The photo you have of the Maple mini, on the main page is the original one that LeafLabs produced, but is no longer available.

It would probably be better if we had a photo of the Baite Maple Mini as that’s the one that is widely available and, if you buy from Baite directly, on their AliExpress store, its the best quality board.
(Some other Maple Mini clones are available, some seem to be produced by other companies, some are Baite rejects which have been hand reworked to fix soldering defects)

Note. I don’t think the Baite Maple Mini, is an exact clone of the original, Leaflabs, Maple Mini. I think that Baite made some changes to reduce manufacturing costs, but I don’t know exactly how it differs from the original.
But you AFIK no one makes an exact clone of the original, and Leaflabs no longer make it.

I suppose if there was demand for an exact copy, it would be prossible to get one made, but for most people the Baite clone works well.

RogerClark wrote:OK
Note. I don’t think the Baite Maple Mini, is an exact clone of the original, Leaflabs, Maple Mini. I think that Baite made some changes to reduce manufacturing costs, but I don’t know exactly how it differs from the original.

The original has different power supplies for analog and digital Vcc, which the clone doesn’t.
This is why one cannot record analog signals and store them on SD card simultaneously on the same board, the digital noise on analog readings is huge.

stevestrong wrote:The original has different power supplies for analog and digital Vcc, which the clone doesn’t.
This is why one cannot record analog signals and store them on SD card simultaneously on the same board, the digital noise on analog readings is huge.

RogerClark wrote:
Also. The photo you have of the Maple mini, on the main page is the original one that LeafLabs produced, but is no longer available.

It would probably be better if we had a photo of the Baite Maple Mini as that’s the one that is widely available and, if you buy from Baite directly, on their AliExpress store, its the best quality board.
(Some other Maple Mini clones are available, some seem to be produced by other companies, some are Baite rejects which have been hand reworked to fix soldering defects)

BenjiHansell wrote:
How bad is this problem? I was planning on using a Maple Mini to transmit ADC values via an NRF24L01+ (SPI).

stevestrong wrote:BenjiHansell wrote:
How bad is this problem? I was planning on using a Maple Mini to transmit ADC values via an NRF24L01+ (SPI).

I sample 2 ADC’s to measure AC voltage and current and it works OK. But when they are sampling, the Maple mini is not doing anything else.
I didnt have any issues with interference