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Troubleshooting

Reminder:
Have you read the FAQ?

Please add to this page any fixes to problems you have had.

Don't forget to see troubleshooting specific to your project.

FIXME Add links to all the troubleshooting procedures on ucapps.de and eventually convert them all to wiki format

Hardware

Firmware

Software

Golden Rules of Troubleshooting

Hi, I'm stryd_one. I'm a professional IT engineer who fixes bugs for a living, and I've been hanging around here long time, and seen a lot of bugs come and go…. Here are some tips which would solve 99% of the problems I've seen. I hope that you'll pay attention to these rules, and that they'll help you too!

1 Patience

Take your time. If you need it finished by a certain deadline, prepare to fail, and move on accordingly. Rushing will only make things worse. Assume nothing. Test everything.
Don't do a half-a job, pay attention to the details and take pride in your work. Do it properly :)

2 One thing at a time

Don't go changing a whole bunch of stuff inbetween tests. If you are lucky enough to fix it doing that, you won't know what the cause was. “So what? It's fixed!” I hear you say…well…maybe it is, maybe you just moved the problem somewhere else, maybe the problem will return… you don't really know!
Similarly, don't try to fix two completely separate matters as though they are one. If your LCD and buttons do not work, then first fix the LCD, then the buttons. If you try to fix both you will just confuse matters.

3 RTFM. Again. Search. Again

Seriously. You should read the entire ucapps.de site, and search both the forum and wiki, several times, with different search parameters if required. When you're done, do it again, in case you missed something. It's VERY likely that you will find the answer you are searching for - IF YOU TRY!
Maybe not, but if you find something useful - which you will - put it in your post when you ask for help. It might give a hint to people trying to help you, and after all, if you save them time searching, they have more time to help you :)
When you go searching, you will almost certainly find test applications and troubleshooting guides. Use them, and your goal will become a lot closer.

4 Everyone wants to help when you are respectful

This forum is mega friendly, probably the friendliest place I've seen in all my 15+ years online. If you're friendly too, then you'll see that for yourself. If you're rude/disrespectful/selfish/lazy/don't follow rules and advice, etc, you'll find that I can be very unpleasant when I want to be ;) and will probably find that noone will want to help you. You probably won't be punished for your disrespect, but your busted midibox will do that for you ;)

5 Give full, clear explanation, and copy/paste error logs

I don't think you could give too much information. I'll just say it again, to get the message across: COPY and PASTE errors and logs and such. COPY and PASTE!!! Just typing what you see, is not enough. It's very important to provide a clear description of the entire situation. Why? Because…

6 Defining the problem = finding the fix

Fixing a problem is easy! The hard part, is figuring out what the problem is. “My LED won't turn on” is not a problem, it's a symptom. Maybe the problem is that you forgot to switch it on? maybe it's in backwards? The fixes to these problems are obvious (switch it on, turn the LED around), because the problem is well defined. This is the aim of the game - define the problem. Don't worry about how to fix it just yet, just find the exact root cause of your worries. If the fix is not obvious at that stage, the forum will help you.

7 Workaround != fix

Don't get these two confused. Workarounds usually come back to bite you in the @$& when you least expect it. Requiring a workaround, is evidence that you didn't define the problem. Because of this, you may be able to fix a symptom, but not the problem itself.

8 Share the answer!

Please share the answer when you find it! It's a good way to give back to the community, and might one day save someone a lot of trouble!

Thanks, and GOOD LUCK!

stryd_one



home/skills/troubleshooting.txt · Last modified: 2008/12/19 23:57 by stryd_one