Embedded Lab

MikroElektronika has posted an announcement today on their news blog site about providing a dedicated platform (Library Stock) for the user community to publish their ideas that could be in various forms including projects, source codes, schematics and tutorials. Since I am a big fan of MikroC pro for PIC, I thought I should share my views on this topic.

Library Stock from mikroElektronika

Currently, they do have a separate Projects page under their main domain name (www.mikroe.com), and a lot of projects have already been posted there. Once I browsed some of them, and I realized most of them are just source codes without sufficient details on the functioning part of the projects. Some of them even don’t have circuit diagrams. I bet even experienced embedded programmers would have problems in understanding those projects by just looking at the source code and no hardware details. MikroElektronika might have realized this too and thought of providing a better content management system for the contribution from user communitiy.

Here are my few suggestions for Library Stock:

1. Documentation is the key of a good project. Therefore, whenever users submit their projects they should at least provide three things: a brief description of what it is about and how it works, the complete circuit diagram,  and the required firmware for the project. This will help readers to understand the project and implement similar scheme in their projects.
2. If the description of the project, circuit diagram and other images are made viewable online for the readers, it would reduce their searching time for what they are actually looking for. Therefore, instead of providing everything of the project in a zipped file, a blogging type platform where registered users can actually write about their projects, would be better.
3. A search feature would be helpful to find the right projects based on entered keywords.
4. Separate categories for Projects, Library Routines, Theory, Tips and Tricks, Product Reviews, etc.
5. A discussion forum or comment section to share ideas and interact with the authors of the projects.
6. If MikroElektronika is expecting quality contents for LibStock, they should think about giving some incentives to their writers too. I liked their idea of “SELLING the libraries and projects over Libstock”. Some other options could be: organizing design contests on annual or semiannual basis, hiring people to write some good quality projects using their products, providing free samples of their products to writers, etc.