Google Season of Docs: Project Page¶
Review and Expand ExpressLRS User Documentation - expresslrs.org
About the organization¶
ExpressLRS (ELRS) is an open source project focusing on developing a radio control (RC) link. The link is primarily designed for first-person view (FPV) crafts (e.g Multicopters, Planes). ELRS aims to provide the best completely open source, high refresh radio control link, minimizing latency while maximizing range. A vast range of hardware in both 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequencies is available.
FPV is a community built on top of open source projects such as flight controller firmware Betaflight and RC handset firmware EdgeTX. ELRS fills a void for an open source and high performance RC link with an active development team of about 20 volunteers.
github.com/ExpressLRS was created nearly 4 years ago and in the past 12 months has experienced significant growth. Not only in code contributions, but also users and commercial manufacturers releasing ELRS compatible hardware.
About the project¶
The project’s problem¶
During early ELRS development users were required to Do It Yourself (DIY) and build their own hardware. This tended to attract tech savvy users. However, in the past 12 months a number of commercial manufacturers have released ELRS compatible hardware. A much wider user group now exists of varying knowledge and initial setup of ELRS can be troublesome. More so for users who are also new to FPV.
A review of the existing user documentation by a technical writer, who has not previously been exposed to FPV, will bring a fresh pair of eyes to the project and help identify knowledge gaps.
The project’s scope¶
The ExpressLRS GSoD project will:
- Introduce the Technical Writer to the FPV community and teach them about flying a FPV multicopter… Lets try and have some fun first
- Introduce the Technical Writer to our troubleshooting procedures.
- This experience will help to identify any knowledge gaps in existing user ELRS documentation.
- Devs and Advanced Users will provide information on general user queries from project volunteers and assist with documentation on recurring issues.
- Review documentation used to assist manufacturers where English may not be their first language.
- Hopefully assist in a major release (ELRS V3) and release notes.
We estimate that this work will take 4-6 months to complete.
Work that is out-of-scope of ELRS project: - In-depth PID Tuning of RC vehicles (Multicopter, Fixed - Wing, Boat, Rover). - Auxiliary function of RC vehicles (Mapping, Package Delivery, Pest Control Drone, Weaponry).
Measuring project’s success¶
The ELRS project runs a Facebook group (8.4k users at time of application) and Discord Server (8.1k users at time of application) to help users troubleshoot setup issues. A milestone of this work will be to see the number of users posting setup issues reduced, and to have documentation for all common issues presented in a user first perspective and mindset.
The project would be a success if we could provide a link to users for 90% of new user questions.
ELRS Developers also volunteer a lot of time communicating with commercial manufacturers. For a majority of the manufacturers English is not their native language and current ELRS documentation may be confusing. A long term goal of the project is to minimize design errors in commercial hardware releases.
Timeline¶
The documentation project will take approximately four to six months. It is expected the initial learning about FPV, Multicopters and ELRS may take 4 - 8 weeks. During which time the existing documentation can be used and reviewed. The remaining time will be used updating and expanding existing user, manufacturer, and developer documentation. ELRS has set its next major release goal before November to include release notes coordinated from this project.
| Dates | Action Items |
|---|---|
| May - June | Learning FPV and ELRS from scratch |
| July - August | Updating and expanding current User and Manufacturer documentation |
| September - October | ELRS V3 release notes and new feature documents |
| November | Project Completion |
Proposed Budget¶
| Budget Item | Amount | Running Total | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical Writer | 10,000 | 10,000 | 26 wk, 6 hrs/wk |
| Technical Writer Hardware | 2,000 | 12,000 | FPV Hardware |
| Volunteer stipends | 500 | 14,500 | 2 ELRS Devs + 3 Adv User |
| Total | 14,500 |
Additional information¶
The ELRS development team includes a range of expertise, from software professionals, academics, researchers, scientists, and university students. And we love nothing more than nerding out on all things FPV in our free time
Case study¶
Organization Description:
ExpressLRS (ELRS) is an open source project focusing on developing a radio control (RC) link. The link is primarily designed for first-person view (FPV) crafts (e.g Multicopters, Planes). ELRS aims to provide the best, completely open source, high refresh radio control link, minimizing latency and maximizing range. A vast range of hardware in both 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequencies is available.
FPV is a community built on top of open source projects such as flight controller firmware Betaflight and RC handset firmware EdgeTX. ELRS fills a void for an open source and high performance RC link with an active development team of about 20 volunteers.
github.com/ExpressLRS was created nearly 4 years ago and in the past 12 months has experienced significant growth. Not only in code contributions, but also users and commercial manufacturers releasing ELRS compatible hardware.
Problem Statement / Proposal Abstract
During early ELRS development users were required to Do It Yourself (DIY) and build their own hardware. This tended to attract tech savvy users. However, in the past 12 months a number of commercial manufacturers have released ELRS compatible hardware. A much wider user group now exists of varying knowledge and initial setup of ELRS can be troublesome, especially for users who are new to FPV.
A review of the existing user documentation by a technical writer, who has not previously been exposed to FPV, will bring a fresh pair of eyes to the project and help identify knowledge gaps.
Project Description
Creating the proposal
The proposal idea was pretty easy for us, as we like to keep it simple. GSoD is fundamentally about improving documentation and also supporting technical writers, so we collectively decided we needed the support to hire a writer to review & write better documentation. The exploding ELRS users base meant we could not continue to provide 1 on 1 support to new users, unlike in the beginning of the project. The demand for more and better documentation is and will be ongoing during the ELRS growth period. However, the community appears to have reached a critical mass and the user base is great at supporting new users.
Budget
Of the initially deposited $5800:
$3000 was invoiced by our Technical Writer.
$1,849.42 of the proposed $2000 hardware budget has been spent.
$600 of the proposed $1000 volunteer stipend has been claimed.
The project was able to stay within the initial budget. Some ExpressLRS hardware manufacturers were even able to help with additional hardware and we thank (in alphabetical order) BETAFPV, Happymodel, and RadioMaster for their assistance in providing hundreds of dollars of free hardware to our technical writer.
Participants
The project had 5 volunteers that were either developers or long term users who were integral community members with their insight: deadbyte, maybenikhil, StonedDawg, YeOldePirate, and commanderguy3001.
We selected our writer Agha Saad after reviewing many resumes and cover letters. He offered an incredibly detailed set of goals and timeline & had previous season of docs experience with Arduino.
While no one dropped out of the project, there were personal issues that arose during the period that made it difficult for some volunteers to be available. This did significantly impact the project's timeline and delay hardware delivery.
Selecting a writer with a pre-existing interest in RC or similar hobby that aligned with the projects, and not focus solely on writing experience, may also have assisted with keeping to the timeline, due to hardware being more accessible to them.
Timeline
Our initial timeline has been heavily delayed through the delivery of hardware to our Writer and the eventual confiscation of said hardware. More details are provided below.
Results
A number of PRs were merged by the Technical Writer, which include major technical topics/issues such as Crystal Oscillator (XO) Frequency Error. However key beginner documents were difficult without hardware for our writer to have hands on experience with.
Metrics
A key metric for the success of the project was to address common user issues in the documentation. Another key metric is the project's user base & growth: at the time of the proposal the Facebook group had 8.4k and Discord 8.1k users. These groups have now grown to 12.4k and 13k respectively!
Therefore, we can say that we observed significant growth as a project & organization within the months of Google Season of Docs, but have no strong metrics correlating to use of documentation, as compared to the beginning of the project.
Analysis
A number of challenges were met during this project. With the final hurdle being the import of FPV hardware to the Technical Writer. In the end the hardware required for learning FPV, building, and flying were confiscated by the country's Ministry of Defense. This massively limited what could/can be completed during the project.
In good faith, the ExpressLRS devs can not call this project a success, as without hardware to write about the documentation that most affects new users did not see many significant improvements.
Summary
A number of PRs were merged by the Technical Writer, which is to be commended without access to hardware. If ELRS was to participate in GSoD again in the future there are a couple major conditions that require checking before hiring a writer:
- Is FPV legal in their country?
- Is the import of FPV/RC hardware legal in their country?
Hot tip for other organizations participating in GSoD and dealing with hardware (especially within the RC & FPV communities). Potentially look to hire someone in a country, or in close proximity to one of the participating developers or volunteers. Local expertise to help with delivery and hand up assistance will be invaluable, as well as an existing understanding of complex regulations surrounding the project.