Facebook Group for CatGenie Users now LIVE!

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Vern Velagic

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Nov 15, 2020, 3:00:06 PM11/15/20
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Hi everybody, 

I've made a group for you all on Facebook called the "CatGenie Users Group" found  

Would love to see you all there. 
Vern


George Scott

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Nov 15, 2020, 3:57:48 PM11/15/20
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Facebook is evil, you couldn't have picked a worse "tool".
 
You won't be seeing me there.......
 
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Nathan Robertson

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Nov 15, 2020, 4:42:07 PM11/15/20
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Nice job, Vern!

This was a question I had asked some time back and no surprise youre getting a vitriolic response – Not the first ive had in this group, and not likely to be the last. Id be happy to contribute and begin porting over whatever knowledge available there to keep a coherent conversation thread going.

Join request sent!

George, Lighten up. Facebook is a tool used by a great many people.

You might not like it, so don’t use it but the fact is that we could broaden the reach of what we are doing here through that lens.

Robert Deliën

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Dec 10, 2020, 11:12:16 AM12/10/20
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> Facebook is evil, you couldn't have picked a worse "tool".
>
> You won't be seeing me there.......

Neither and am I.
I'm sure there's a demand for a regular users group, but I don't wanna get zucked.

Geekm0nkey

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Dec 10, 2020, 5:11:54 PM12/10/20
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Being as no one seems to like the Facebook idea, why not use discord.. You can have real time conversations, as well as searchable content. You can easily organize it into channels, assign roles and permissions. Share files.. Etc. I run a good size discord for a gaming community, if you are interested I'd be happy to help someone get it set up. Personally I'd prefer it to this "old school messaging" type communications. Real-time is where it's at.

Nathan Robertson

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Dec 10, 2020, 5:46:29 PM12/10/20
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Because the vast majority of the WORLD’s population has a facebook account.

If the idea is to publicize the work that’s being done here, FB is a great way to do it.

 

By all means, if you want to spin up Discord, do it but my guess is that the widest net cast via facebook is a great place to start.

So far, ive seen exactly two people chime in that facebook is an awful platform. I take mental note and add it to the negativity received when I simply put forth the notion of using ESP32 to connect the CG120 to Alexa/Google Home with the same hatred, naysaying that im not the first with the idea, etc etc.

 

Yikes.

 

Poor MindBender thought I was subscribing him to do the dev work, and honestly I just gave up even trying to communicate anything with this group at all. I imagine im not the only one in this particular category of “snowflake” I suppose.

 

If the goal is to turn people away (and by people, I mean highly skilled technical folks like myself) then this community is doing a fantastic job.

 

so when someone pipes up to open the gates to get more people involved only to have haters shit on the idea, it does nothing but a disservice to the goals we are trying to accomplish here.

 

That said, a massive thanks is in order to Mindbender and all those that have chosen to get involved. Make no mistake, the effort is appreciated….

However, in many cases “Meet the native where the native is” has to be considered. Facebook is where those natives live, plain and simple.

It is a FANTASTIC tool for communication and collaboration…. I mean, where do you think more cat lovers (and likely, owners of the CG) live…. Facebook or Discord? I’m on the fence….

 

In any case, lets lose the hostility as it serves nobody, least of all the incredible amount of work undertaken to get where we are with this…

 

The facebook group is started, is gaining new members, and information is being ported there for better visibility than an antiquated google group.

 

Don’t wanna “get zucked”? make a burner account. Whats the big fuss?

Also, if you’re worried about FB, and are using Google services…. Ive got a pot and a kettle to introduce you to…

 

Now, maybe we can talk about rebooting CatNIP as an addon using the Serial port via Wemo D1 mini or other solution to rival the CG AI? That to me is worth exploring and talking about, not shitting on other peoples ideas. The way I figure it, MindBender is THE guy when it comes to the CG120 programming side, but interfacing with the serial port via myriad existing options to tie into many peoples already existing smarthome setups would be no bad thing for others to take on without burdening him on the programming side. I know hes a busy guy.

Just because YOU might not want something, doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for it..

 

Its been a crazy year. We all have a lot going on. Please take this message in the spirit of improving our community and attracting more engineering talent to help with the load and next steps with CatGenius. And hey, if maybe MindBender wants to sell more units, advertising on FB would be a great way to do it…. Offer it for sale, put a lead time clause in it, run the ad for a month as a “group buy” essentially and BAM! Just a thought…

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Dan Bell

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Dec 10, 2020, 7:35:07 PM12/10/20
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I unfortunately can’t join any Facebook based groups either, due to both my job and individual privacy concerns. Vern, thanks for the effort though, hopefully you didn’t put too much time into it.  I’m open to other avenues and am also happy continuing to use GoogleGroups until they cancel it like they are wont to do. 

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Dan Bell

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Dec 10, 2020, 7:58:50 PM12/10/20
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Nathan,
I’m sorry your experiences in this group have been negative. I myself have never noticed negativity in this group and hope nothing I’ve sent was construed as such. What I have seen a few times over the years is someone suggest their take on how to integrate a Raspberry Pi/SBC or some other micro controller with a CatGenie (many of us have our own implementations of this) and within months or less either lose interest or stop posting all together and so the project festers. Perhaps what you considered negativity was one of us reacting with “we’ve tried X before but people stopped working on it so it never go anywhere”? I vaguely remember that happening with a project to create a whole replacement board. I’ve been continuously impressed with MindBender’s patience over the years as I ask dumb questions or provide confusing source code patches which he then has to figure out. 

Anyhoo, hope everyone is healthy and safe. 

Cheers,
Dan

Nathan Robertson

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Dec 10, 2020, 8:07:29 PM12/10/20
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Thanks Dan. I can understand there being some fatigue over dropped projects, and perhaps I misread some things. My only hope is to help the community, as does Vern clearly. I think we can have our cake and eat it too, but approaching things with an open mind and listening is always a great place to start.

-N
From: catg...@googlegroups.com <catg...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Dan Bell <dbe...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2020 4:58:45 PM
To: catg...@googlegroups.com <catg...@googlegroups.com>

Robert Deliën

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Dec 11, 2020, 6:15:04 AM12/11/20
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> Being as no one seems to like the Facebook idea, why not use discord.. You can have real
> time conversations, as well as searchable content. You can easily organize it into channels,
> assign roles and permissions. Share files.. Etc. I run a good size discord for a gaming
> community, if you are interested I'd be happy to help someone get it set up. Personally
> I'd prefer it to this "old school messaging" type communications. Real-time is where it's at.

I do not have anything against Discord. At least not in the same way I have something against FaceBook (or Google, for that matter). But I do not have any intentions to move this group.

Personally, I dislike meta-messages: Receiving an email about a message being receive for me, without the actual contents of that message, like LinkedIn does. It requires me to log on to their website, getting tracked, only to read something not personally addressed to me. That's too much effort. I prefer messages to end up in my email in-box, just like any other message, ready to read, with a low effort to respond.

Having said that, I do think it's a good idea to have an easier accessible group for, regular, stock CatGenie users to.

Robert Deliën

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Dec 11, 2020, 7:08:32 AM12/11/20
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> Because the vast majority of the WORLD’s population has a facebook account.
> If the idea is to publicize the work that’s being done here, FB is a great way to do it.

Fair point. Though it doesn't make me dislike Facebook less.


> By all means, if you want to spin up Discord, do it but my guess is that the

> widest net cast via facebook is a great place to start.


I think Discord is a good idea, but it would spread discussions across sites, and I already don't like the need to search email, whatsapp, Messages and LinkedIn if I need to look up some old discussion, so adding Discord will make that worse.


> So far, ive seen exactly two people chime in that facebook is an awful platform.

> I take mental note and add it to the negativity received when I simply put forth

> the notion of using ESP32 to connect the CG120 to Alexa/Google Home with the

> same hatred, naysaying that im not the first with the idea, etc etc.

>
> Yikes.


Nobody hates here. It's all in the eye of the beholder.


> Poor MindBender thought I was subscribing him to do the dev work,


I do not enjoy being talked down to.


> and honestly I just gave up even trying to communicate anything with this group

> at all. I imagine im not the only one in this particular category of “snowflake”

> I suppose.


Within this group, I'm not so sure.


> If the goal is to turn people away (and by people, I mean highly skilled technical

> folks like myself) then this community is doing a fantastic job.


I think the ESP32 discussion would have taken a whole different course if you would have started with "I'm currently porting your software onto an ESP32 and I'm running into this and that problem. Can you help me out?

Chris spent A LOT of time on CatNIP, severely messing up the CatGenius code base. I was planning on cleaning that up, but he never published the source for the Android application, or even the binary, so I had to toss that out.

Less than a hand full of people contributed to the code with bug fixed.

The vast majority of the people here are contributing by reporting bugs and helping out others trouble shoot their boxes.


Show me what you are working on and that you know what you are doing, and you'll get all the help you need.


> so when someone pipes up to open the gates to get more people involved only to

> have haters shit on the idea, it does nothing but a disservice to the goals we are

> trying to accomplish here.


Pooh, man, you're angry! Even though I do not always have the time to respond, I read every message in this list, and I have no idea what set you off... Was it me?


> That said, a massive thanks is in order to Mindbender and all those that have chosen

> to get involved. Make no mistake, the effort is appreciated….


I guess the keyboard is a bit harsher than a human voice from a human face would be.


> However, in many cases “Meet the native where the native is” has to be considered.

> Facebook is where those natives live, plain and simple.


If you want to organize regular CatGenie users, yes. Not so sure if you want to organize litterbox tinkerers.


> It is a FANTASTIC tool for communication and collaboration…. I mean, where do you

> think more cat lovers (and likely, owners of the CG) live…. Facebook or Discord? I’m

> on the fence….


This group is not intended for CatGenie users. Occasionally one drops in and people here are more than willing to help them diagnosing what's wrong with their box, but this group is intended for CatGenius, the alternative CatGenie compatible firmware, and modifications to the litter-box. If regular CatGenie users started asking their regular user's questions here, this group would be empty in just a few months.


Subscribe to the Linux Kernel mailing list (https://lkml.org/) and post a regular user's question, and you'll understand what I mean.


> In any case, lets lose the hostility as it serves nobody, least of all the incredible

> amount of work undertaken to get where we are with this…


I am running this list for over 10 years now and I had to ban only 1 guy, many years ago. There is no hostility here. Skepticism, perhaps. Sarcasm, may be. But no hostility.


> The facebook group is started, is gaining new members, and information is being

> ported there for better visibility than an antiquated google group.


It may be antiquated and it may not be a lot, but it is ours. If it disturbs you; You don't _have_ to be here.


> Don’t wanna “get zucked”? make a burner account. Whats the big fuss?

> Also, if you’re worried about FB, and are using Google services…. Ive got a pot and

> a kettle to introduce you to…


This group still dates from the time when Google's slogan was: "Don't be evil." That attitude changed.

I'm not going to move this group, unless it's to something much better, worth loosing the members dropping out over.


> Now, maybe we can talk about rebooting CatNIP as an addon using the Serial port via

> Wemo D1 mini or other solution to rival the CG AI?


Sure.


> That to me is worth exploring and talking about, not shitting on other peoples ideas.

> The way I figure it, MindBender is THE guy when it comes to the CG120 programming

> side, but interfacing with the serial port via myriad existing options to tie into many

> peoples already existing smarthome setups would be no bad thing for others to take

> on without burdening him on the programming side. I know hes a busy guy.

> Just because YOU might not want something, doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for it..


The problem is; there's only been ~10 people asking for this feature during the past 10 years...


The cold hard reality is that most people flashing CatGenius into their box is to just circumvent the cartridge system, while being too cheap to buy a CartridgeGenius (http://cartridgegenius.com/) from me (no judgement). Only a very small number of people is interested in improving their box.


By the way CartridgeGenius is very easy to interface with over it's serial port...


> Its been a crazy year. We all have a lot going on. Please take this message in the spirit

> of improving our community and attracting more engineering talent to help with the load

> and next steps with CatGenius.


Same here.


> And hey, if maybe MindBender wants to sell more units, advertising on FB would be a great

> way to do it…. Offer it for sale, put a lead time clause in it, run the ad for a month as a

> “group buy” essentially and BAM! Just a thought…


Well, I really need to keep CartridgeGenius a small scale project, to keep things manageable.

Nathan Robertson

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Dec 31, 2020, 12:26:25 PM12/31/20
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Wanted to follow up on this thread…

Robert, id like to apologize for how this last message came across – None of it was meant as talking down to you whatsoever. – The comment of “Poor mindbender” was meant in the tone of “This guy already has his hands full”

 

Full disclosure, I _may_ have had a little too much caffeine when I wrote all that, so apologies if I seemed “set off” – its not you, its me. 😊

 

That said, FB for CG users, sure. For CatGenius? You’re right, it doesn’t make sense.

 

Discord is great for dev chat and organizing things, but you are right – Google groups works fine for now, and I appreciate your principled nature in keeping things where they are.

 

Happy new year, all and good riddance 2020.

 

From: "catg...@googlegroups.com" <catg...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Robert Deliën <rob...@delien.nl>
Reply-To: "catg...@googlegroups.com" <catg...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, December 11, 2020 at 4:08 AM
To: "catg...@googlegroups.com" <catg...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [catgenius] Facebook Group for CatGenie Users now LIVE!

 

> Because the vast majority of the WORLD’s population has a facebook account.

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Robert Deliën

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Jan 1, 2021, 4:31:56 AM1/1/21
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Hi Nathan,

I’m glad to see your message. I’ve been struggling with thoughts about the way you left the group and I figured some aftercare was due. So I’ve bee meaning to drop you a message, with peace on earth being in season now, but then the holidays arrived, I was stil still swamped with work, so urgency left.

Anyway; Now being Newyearsday, still early, but with a whole family program, I’m going to procrastinate writing a decent personal reply to tonight or tomorrow, because I need to take some time for that. I hope we can keep you as a member.

Cheers,

        Robert.

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