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Robert Peter Oakes,

You make a very good point, I remember the C2000 Piccolo that I tested and none of the testers could get more than an LED blinking. With little documentation and very sparse information as how to get the code demos to work I think most of us gave up after a few weeks of trying stuff.

As for this TM group, what is that ?

I get what your saying but I have to add to that with this...

In a road test there is a very mixed bag of people applying and getting the goods, in general, the vendors providing the goods are wanting the user to showcase the product in a practical and real world way, perhaps with some humor and creativity along the way.

For several road tests, the ATMEL SAMA boards come to mind here as a prime example, had so little information that none of the testers where able to really "TEST" the boards with real world things, hook up DACs, ADCs, Various displays, get their own designed app up and running because the basics were not there. I was lucky to get some stuff working but it was not easy. in general people had to start compiling linux etc in an attempt to add some basic functionality. That to me is not a road test, thats a reserch project and in itself a reasearch project in the form of "Hey Guys, heres a new product, with some sparse data sheets, wanna see what you can do with it !!" is an equally fun thing to do but it is not a road test in the classic meaning and it takes a very different kind of person to pull that one off in any reasonable way or time. Christian did a few of these with the TM group as he knew we had the experiance and background to do it and we knew what we were getting into

So yes there is room for both but If the latter, then perhaps a BIG "HEALTH WARNING... Time suck inbound" lable would be appropriate. For the former I typically expect to see good support for the basic product there and we add our app / creativity to it, not spend the review period just trying to get it to even operate with no value add.

Even the up comming DMM with DAC8734EVM is a bit of a mixed bag. There is loads of info for the DMM and everyone im sure has a basic understanding of how to use a DMM but would need to get to grips with the precision side of things (Not the same as your hand held 4.5 Digit DMM for sure). The DAC on the other hand has very little information outside of the primary data sheet for the DAC. it may be out there somewhere but I have not found it which is why I created all the tutorials and sketches on how to use the DAC so the testers can get to testing rather than how do I get this to work kind of reviews.

TI and ATMEL both often have tutorials and code examples hidden away somewhere but there not always easy to find and may take E14, directly asking for LAB / Workshop presentations to be posted with the Road test to help the reviewers to get up and running.

Hi Sagar,

I am road-testing the NFC Texas Instruments component and - as I was expcting - I have found the same issues. No useful documentation and very few hardware specifications in the datasheet from where the things should be understood, mostly with empiric testing

Frankly I think that it is not so worth, especially educating the young engineers because this is exactly the opposite side of a well known reality. If you want all ready-to start, plug and play and report what happens it is a MUST expected by a well established product on the market. When I search for a part or a component I am concentrating on the project I am working on and as a matter of fact one of the most influent parameters in the components choice is the availability of good datasheets, examples, circuit warnings and issues etc.

If I assume the responsibility to test a very new product, it is almost normal that I have to move a sep ahead and use my knowledge to see what this product is and how this product works. And is also supposed that to do this I should have at least a base knowledge on the specific context (i.e. in the mentioned case what is NFC, RFID) and what I should expect from this class of products. Better also supposing that in my lab I have something to make tests and parallel checking of the *new* product respect other adopting the same or similar technology.

In few words, when I submit a proposal for a road-test I think that users should be more oriented to a self-understainding process instead of a self-teaching path.

Enrico

Good idea! I will see what we can do about making sure required software for RoadTest items is available prior to sending units out. Because RoadTest products tend to be very new to market, it is sometimes difficult to get it right at launch, but maybe we could delay these by a couple of weeks until we know everything is available.

I would like to see better support for drivers and images for development and evaluation cards available like the SAMxDx cards, many road tests have been spoiled due to lack of basic information and drivers / images. I know this is not E14's fault but if its going to be pushed as the next best thing then it should be also supported, im sure there is quite a list of cards that this would apply to beyond the SAM ones from Atmel.