Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Tutorials
Videos and photographs should be used as a part of your documentation and for tutorials.
Good visual documentation can make a project visible and repeatable, which in turn can
make it more popular. As documented in the Best Practices, images or videos are an excel-
lent way to share information:
Photos help people understand what your project is and how to put it together. It's
good to publish photographs from multiple viewpoints and at various stages of as-
sembly. If you don't have photos, posting 3D renderings of your design is a good
alternative. Either way, it's good to provide captions or text that explain what's
shown in each image and why's it's useful. Photos are useful for several areas of
documentation, not only tutorials, but assembly guides, Hello World instructions,
hook up guides, troubleshooting, etc.
Lulzbot offers an excellent example of universally understandable, easy-to-understand
instructions. These instructions are almost not language dependent and can be understood
visually. They include large detailed images that are clearly shot, with step-by-step in-
structions and often examples are included to help would-be makers (
Figure 14.5
)
.
(Source: Screenshot from ohai-kit.alephobjects.com/project/extruder_calibration/)
Figure 14.5
OHAI-kit documentation.
Lulzbot created its own open source software documentation tool called the OHAI-kit
(
www.ohai-kit.alephobjects.com/
)
. In
Figure 14.5
, note how the documentation lists every
tool needed for the project as step 1.
Another example of a step-by-step instruction platform used for a plethora of projects
is Instructables (
www.instructables.com
)
. Not everything on Instructables is open source
