To the Diy Drones Community from Joshua Johnson:
Which proposed improvements do you like? Which ones do you dislike? Do you have your own ideas on improvements that would put Diy Drones ahead of Rc Groups and add more resources for the community? Please share and collaborate this is a perfect time for the community to help shape and evolve this community in something even better!!!!
My List of Proposed Improvements for DiyDrones.com:
- Change background to black to fit in with the top banner and make the website more appealing but keep the very bottom of the website that displays the copyrights, who created the website, etc just a plain background. Editing the color text scheme so that links don't get lost will take 30-60 mins to fully sift through. )
- Add eye catching content to the home page like the High Tech Revolving Visitor globe that I embedded into the Diy Drones News Center! (Members will have access to website statistics to use for personal and business purposes)
- Add a Poll Center page and HTML embed a 3rd Party polling encoder to allow the community to vote on key issues and hot topics ( Maintain this section constantly adding new polls that the community will find useful and interesting at the same time )
- Instead of Video's add a Menu called: Diy Drones and the Drop down menu should include Options such as: Facebook(Linking members to the Diy Drones Facebook), Twitter (Linking members to the Diy Drones Twitter), News(Linking people to the Diy Drones News center I created), Groups(All Groups Link), And Rules(The Diy Drones Website Rules).
- Setup schedule to change 100 photo carousel (Same Day each month) at the top of the home page with 100 new photos and maybe even set up a contest where we take a poll and embed in a Diy Drones Poll Center and allow the community to vote on a winner and the winner each month will receive a prize based on the highest number of votes
- Video's and Photos should be pulled off the menu list and put into the Members drop down menu. Also the Members Drop down menu could be decked out with tons of features that can assist the members in different ways of engaging ( Could be links to the Diy Drones Skype Chat Group, an IRC Chat could have its own page and link in the members drop down menu which won't cause any lag for the website and will allow members alternative ways to engage. )
- Change Store to 3DR Store ( When someone is brand new to a website and they click on store to check out products getting sent to a different website usually makes people uncomfortable or people sometimes assume they got sent to a fraudulent website so changing the name to 3DR Store will give people a pre warning on where you intend on sending them )
- Getting Started Menu should be renamed For Beginners and should include like 10-15 drop down options ( This drop down menu should include a link to the website currently being developed by a Diy Drones Member that is map based that allows people to implement their local legislation's and laws concerning drones to a map. Also links to websites like the Academy of Model Aeronautics and any other useful Diy Drones or non Diy Drones pages that beginners would find useful )
- Forum drop down menu could have some important forum topics added and changed each month of discussions that the community deems important ( If something like the 3DR IRIS is a hot top that month create a page or link a current page to a new drop down menu option under Forum )
- Blogs Drop down menu should be the same thing as the Forum with links directly to important Blogs that are still hot topics or are of importance to the community ( Use this drop down menu to showcase the top blogs/news of the month that members would deem important. This could be updated weekly or monthly. )
- ArduPlane, ArduCopter, and ArduRover drop down menus should all be jam packed with useful links to pages, discussions, blogs, or website pages that are important or pertain to these menu subjects. ( The drop down menus could have minor schedule updating by a member of the Diy Drones Team with new links that members would deem important. )
- MyPage drop down menu could include links to MyGroups, MyFriends, MyDiscussions, MyBlogs, Etc
Comments
And it's the leader.
(Almost) everybody, at least on RCG use Ardu(your remote device here) firmware.
That could be channeled. That's the idea of "Open Source". Whether RCG knows it or not, they are an arm of DIYD.
That could be further channeled. Focus on that for the site. Documentation. Support. Bring em here.
DIYD is a one product show so it lives and dies with 3DR. RCG supports everything.
In the end, it's the business behind the forums that drive them, and as several here have indicated, the businesses are different.
I happened upon RCGroups first, or at least RCG caught my eye first. I am a "Do it Yourselfer" from wayyy back. I'd almost have to say that RCG is more oriented to the DIYer, despite the name. Althought hey have a lot of RTFs and ARFs, I was attracted by the offer of parts, and good prices and so far of good quality (although I've heard stories....)
I made my first quad for parts there.
Of course I'd heard of DIYDrones over there, but I guess the first thing that struct me was the price. So I didn't really pick up on DIY.
Finally, I did really miss quality support at RCG, more than anything, developer support. If I was having a problem, there were no good answers. I really had to dig around to find the documentation to load and configure my quad. I've got my quad flying now, but not like I'd like. So I decided to buy an RTF quad!
Where alse would I go but here!!! So I started to come here more seriously, and I discovered that in the end the cost wasn't all that bad. And the development environment is great! Plus RCG is following, DIY is leading.
So it has the best of both worlds, RTFs for the beginner, and development potential for people like me.
One thing I would like to see improve, is not so much the appearance, but documentation! There are good developers, and you can eventually find the right place to find the answer to what you need, but if you are a newbie looking for an RTF, and he can't see how he can support and manage his purchase with in the first couple of hours on the site, he'll probably go look somewhere else.
I just about did. And I am an electronics engineer with 38 yrs of experience and 27 yrs of RC.
I loved the sound of the pixhawk. It's the future. and now I know what I need to do to develop with it, but it took me far too long. (A week in my spare time)
Each product page should have a button right beside the product, which goes directly to one or two extensive documents. An unpacking guide isn't enough. Nor are deep chained links to dozens of pages. You don't need to know the detailed procedure, but complete specs. I still can't find what the center to center diameter of a 3DR-X8 is.
Something more sofisticated like the PixHawk needs a good manual. Maybe not detailed instructions of how to program and load it, but perhaps 5 to 7 pages of structural and block diagrams of hardware and firmware.
You need to think about what the 1st time buyer is needing to know. He has to make a technical decision before he buys.
@Jason, agree. The models are not the same between diydrones and rcgroups. diydrones is more focussed and less dense amounts of topics that are discussed, which makes it, for me, much more effective and interactive.
On RCgroups, I'm lost. It is too dense, too many topics, too big. You could easily miss new interesting topics and it is impossible to follow it all.
On the contrary I find this diydrones much "closer" and at human scale.
The search feature on RCGroups is miles ahead of diydrones, basically I come hear to see whats new....then bounce over to rcgroups to get up with the latest, I spend 10x as long on rcgroups vs here, diydrones to me is a website/blog 1st, whereas RCgroups is a forum 1st
Ning is primarily designed to be a social community platform. Great for telling you favorite pop-star how much you love the latest song of his/hers, but not very well suited for a long running discussion about technical matters like with DIY. In my opinion the blog part is kinda ok, but the forum is a joke. Trying to follow forum threads and keeping track of new posts in older threads is close to impossible.
I dont know if ill ever enjoy ning
It's something this community desperately needs! A proper way to identify fellow members based off their skills or interests so we can all Social Network and gain knowledge from each other! Like I said I'm more then willing to spend 4+ hours a day implementing titles and working on this free of charge as a volunteer. This is something I have been wishing to see for over 3 years.
@ItCanOnlyBeJared, The way I look at it is as such, There are many communities out there that people contribute their time and efforts to help their fellow hobbyists. Each community offers different things to different demographics of hobbyists. Diy Drones has the capability to capture all these key/essential pieces to the "Community Puzzle" to create the ultimate drone community with membership totals ranging from 100,000-500,000 members from all across the world and in every industry and spectrum of Robotics and Drones. Ranging from hobbyists, business people, Engineers, CEO, Manufacturers, distributors, most of all I'd love to see some military specialists incorporate their knowledge on drones but towards civilian based applications. The titling system on Ning/DiyDrones.com that gives people titles like Diy Drones News Or Admin or 3D Robotics should really be taken advantage of to help people identify proper people to social network with or ask for assistance and advice. If someone is an Engineer I'd love to see a Title under their photo that says Aero Engineer or CAD Engineer. If you are a farmer looking for agricultural applications for your farm a title that says Farmer or Rancher could be applied based off what your interests are in the drone/robotics field. If someone is a Journalist they could sport the title journalist or CNBC for example. I'm more then willing to assist the Diy Drones Team by creating an application process and system for people to apply for titles and I am more then willing to do all the work in implementing their titles
Isn't this whole surpassing thing kind of irrelevant? The 2 communities are not related enough. On DIYDrones, you have often low quality small sized durable economy oriented aircraft platforms fitted with autopilots. On RCGroups, you have a generalized wide appeal hobby community.
It would be a mistake to try and overtake them just because. But sure, you can identify the strengths and quality features of RCG and make a remediation based upon agreeable observations for progression. I think the management here should just look at the reasonably organized smaller drone oriented rc communities and make a stronger more modernized version of all of that.
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