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How to contribute to the No-picture Camera project?

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given.

"80% of success is just showing up." - Woody Allen

Contributing to open source for the first time can be scary and a little overwhelming. This project is like the others. It needs help and that help can mean using it, sharing the information, supporting people, whatever. The thing that folks forget about open source is that it's most volunteers who are doing it for the love of it. They show up.

You are not a developer? We are glad that you are involved. We want you to feel as comfortable as possible with this project, whatever your skills are. Here are some ways to contribute:

  • use it for yourself
  • communicate about the project
  • submit feedback
  • report a bug
  • write or fix documentation
  • fix a bug or an issue
  • implement some feature

How to use this project for yourself?

Initially the No-picture Camera project has been initiated so that as many people as possible can play with smart cameras powered by Raspberry Pi boards and connected over LoRa technology. There is so much to learn in these domains!

How to communicate about the project?

If you believe that the project can help other persons, for whatever reason, just be social about it. Use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or any other tool that are used by people you dare. Lead them to play with the No-picture Camera too!

How to submit feedback?

The best way to send feedback, positive or negative, is to file an issue. At first sight it may seems strange to mix feedback with issues. In practice this is working smoothly because there is a single place for asynchronous interactions across the project community.

Provide feedback right now

Your use case may be new, and therefore interesting to us. Or you may raise the hand and explain your own user experience, bad or good. Ask a question if something is not clear. If you are proposing a feature:

  • Explain in detail how it would work.
  • Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.
  • Remember that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that contributions are welcome :)

How to report a bug?

Have you identified some bug? This is great! There is a single place for all bugs related to this project:

Project bugs and issues

This is where issues are documented and discussed before they are fixed by the community. Each time you report a bug, please include:

  • Your operating system name and version.
  • Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.
  • Detailed steps to reproduce the bug.

How to improve the documentation?

The project could always use more documentation, for sure. Currently pages are stored as Markdown documents in the docs directory. Images are put in docs\media.

Project primary documentation

So if you already used a text editor, and made some screenshots, please consider to improve project documentation.

For example, here are the typical steps required for the addition of a new tutorial page:

  1. From the project page at GitHub, you can fork it so that you have your own project space. If you do not have a GitHub account, please create one. This is provided for free, and will make you a proud member of a global community that matters.

  2. Clone the forked project to your workstation so that you get a copy of all files there. GitHub Desktop is recommended across all platforms it supports.

  3. Open a text editor and write some text in Markdown format. Then save it to a new document, e.g., docs\tutorial01.md

  4. Make some screen shots or select some pictures that will be displayed within the document. Put all of them in docs\media.

  5. Commit changes and push them back to GitHub. On GitHub Desktop this is as simple as clicking on the Sync button.

  6. Visit the forked project page at GitHub and navigate to the new documentation page. The Markdown will be turned automatically to a web page, so that you can check everything. Go back to step 4 and iterate as much time as needed.

  7. When you are really satisfied by your work, then submit it to the community with a Pull Request. Again, in GitHub Desktop this is a simple click on a button.

  8. All Pull Requests are listed from the original project page so you can monitor what the community is doing with them, and jump in anytime.

  9. When your Pull Request is integrated, then your contribution is becoming an integral part of the project, and you become an official contributor. Thank you!

How to fix a bug?

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with "bug" is open to whoever wants to implement it.

How to implement new features?

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with "enhancement" is open to whoever wants to implement it.