Hi all,

First, I'd like to apologize for letting these forum threads go unattended for so long. I also want to thank you all for your continuing engagement in the community.

Onto the issues at hand:

Session Timeout/Unexpected Logout
The session timeout has been extended, so you should not be getting logged out while you're adding items to your BOM and updating your design info. We didn’t think through the BOM form enough: of course most BOMs are pretty large so we should have had an import/export feature from/to spreadsheet file (.csv for instance). Unfortunately we are consumed with getting ready for the next phase and cannot implement this feature right now. As Terry suggests in his blog, we recommend you invoke an 80/20 approach: put 80% (by value) of your BOM items and put a single BOM item “misc discretes” if you have to with we the BOM value of the total misc resistors, capacitors, etc. That should keep it manageable for now.

Old Videos After Uploading
We just implemented a solution that will fix this problem. Previously, when you uploaded a new video, it "overwrote" the previous video. They shared the same filename. Unfortunately, most browsers see the same filename, check their cache and rather than re-downloading, they just load what is cached.
Which is understandable since you wouldn't want to re-download the same file over and over. We are now giving new filenames to all revisions of your uploaded videos so the browser will download the latest video.

Emails Not Being Delivered/Difficult Registration Process
We continuously test the email system to make sure emails are being sent.
Early on, when the website was just starting to get going, we did have some problems with Hotmail completely ignoring our emails, but this has been resolved. It's important to note that each email address can be used to sign-up only once. If you are able to sign-up a second time with the same email address, this means the email was incorrectly entered the first time or something prevented you from signing up initially, most likely the username was already taken. We have tested the registration with AOL, .ar (Argentinean domains), .au (Australian domains), .nz (New Zealand domains)
and have successfully received the confirmation emails.

Unfortunately, the email confirmation is necessary to prevent automated scripts from creating accounts and posting spam on our forums/blogs/etc.
We've been lucky so far that we haven't received any spam, but it is in large part due to the email confirmation.

Anyone having trouble registering can always email us directly. I understand your colleagues, friends, and family are not likely to email us, so contestants are welcome to send us a note on behalf of their colleagues and we will resolve the issue directly with your colleague. All we need is the email address that was used to register.

Better Quality Video
Lastly, we want to let you know that we will be increasing the resolution of the videos to 800x600 for the next phase. The initial video was small, but we needed to be safe since we all know how bandwidth issues can impact site responsiveness.

We want to thank you all again for letting us know about the issues you're finding. As always, please do not hesitate to email us with any issues.

Sincerely,
The myPIC32 Team

I have had a few friends (more then five) saying that they can't register and as I had no problem myself I thought of them doing something wrong. Then the other day my son wanted to vote for my design (so someone elses I don't know ) and could not register. So I sat down with his computer and tried it my selves. And it is really impossible to login. I tried to retrieve the password a few times and the spam protection ate the mail (as all mails from the site ) but using the new password its still impossible to login. So there is definitely something wrong. For a while I expected some dependency on a space in the username but I tried most combination and that did not work out either.

Also there is some bug in the code that submit the description of the project. I changed some small stuff yesterday and this ended in three hours work to get things right again. I was unable to edit the full document because if I did I was returned to the main page of the site without any changes saved. Instead I had to change small parts, save, change another part save. With the reload in between that always take a long time here this took a terrible lot of time. Now when I update using 3.0.3 Firefox on Linux a new empty window is left after every update.

Be Hungry, Stay Foolish!
/Ake

I just checked my BOM as of 9:28 AM on Monday the 13th my BOM shows empty? I checked it last night and it was fine.
I hope you guys didn't loose my BOM. I didn't think to try to make a backup of it so I would have to enter the whole thing.

Please tell me you didn't loose it.

Me too. I am afraid since now every thing shows locked now!!

Boseji

Whatever it was seems that they fixed it. I checked about 20+ designs this morning after the deadline
and all had empty BOMs, including mine, yours, radioruler, etc.

Cheers
Jorge

What is the plan to remove or move out from the contestants list those designs that didn't
uploaded the required materials for Phase II ?

Making the list shorter will speed up loading the list and also direct people to vote
for the designs that completed their work to be elegible for Phase III.

Regards
Jorge

Hi Jorge,

You are right about the Speed up part since many of my friends who trying to vote me call the site a snail.
But I feel that every one should be given a fair chance till the end of Phase II at least in terms of ratings.

Regards,
Boseji

Hello,

Well there are some good designs out there. I wish if they were allowed to stay throughout the contest.
It might be helpful for may other people.
And if not qualifed fo the next phase they can still maintain their content and post their updates in the Blog.

But the Selected folks can be listed separately as you said, so that the voting access can be direct.

Just a thought,

Boseji

Knock, knock, anybody there ?

If I can get permission to take my webcam into work (they don't allow cameras) I will try to make a video of the
response time of the web site behind our corporate firewall. Digikey response to any page is 1 sec (approx)
MYPIC32 website response is 20 to 60 seconds per page of any contestants page. I thought maybe if I
could make a video (even though it would be pretty boring due to slow action) then the web developers might
be able to understand the speed problem...

cause whatever they are testing it with, does not exhibit the problem (or they would all be fired)

Hi,

I think the Description content for the project once saved causes the list to update. I have seen this at earlier point to time.
Even when I was updating my code recently my project used to come on top.
I am not sure if this feature is required during the lock down since most of the projects can be accessed from the contestant lists.

Best of Luck,

Boseji

Hello,

I found a way to make sure that there is no issue while I browse. I use the Safari Browser in the Private Mode. This helps to automatically clear the non responsive content. I tried to do the same with FF but failed. IE there is no hope. I think the site people should check out the cross browser compatibility.

Best of Luck,

Boseji

I can successfully manage to access the site, by use of FireFox 3.0.3 with AdBlockPlus and Noscript extensions.
I generally only enable scripts in those cases and for those sites where it is necessary and I trust the site.

Also if you enable the 'Error Console' in FireFox you can see the many issues with various portions of the site content.

One error at

http://s7.addthis.com/js/152/addthis_widget.js

is an illegal character after "GIF89a"

There are gobs of "unknown property" and "Error in parsing value for" warnings where Declarations are dropped
or Rulesets ignored

I am still having major issues with people not being able to register!!!!!

They go through the process and never recieve their password email.

I have seriously missed out on a lot of votes because of this.

I know of about 20+ in this past week at and another 30+ from earlier that are still having probelms

Can you just change it so they select a password and then enter the graphical generated numbers, and then tthey are logged in from that point.... with a confirmation email afterward.

Some others have complained about their vote not sticking... i.e. they vote and then they check in later and their vote is not registered.

Mike

Hi,

I used this technique since not many people in my place have a high speed internet connection or may not be knowing all this tech savvy stuff.
Not to mention that after Wipro Infosys and Sataym people here now know Microhip since many people inquired me about the whereabouts of them.
I had to tell them the story about Microchip and micro controllers. I guess it was fair to solve all the issue since the main target was to drive more traffic and sign ups.

Best of Luck,

Boseji

Hey Mike, good luck with your project and with your 15 million light years away voters...

Happy to report that this issue seems to have been fixed.

Now only the profile information that is rendered by the browser is being sent.

At least a small sign that somebody is steering the ship.

Regards
Jorge

]
Simple. The Phase 2 "Hardware Design" is locked, the Phase 1 "Paper Design" is not. Now I'm not saying that I agree with things being this way, just that it is what it is.

If its locked it should all be locked IMHO... Phase 1 and phase 2...

What do you expect ? It has more bits !!!!

Just kidding

Cheers

Jorge is searching kids votes

Not really, my wife complains that I broke too many already ...

That is too funny, Jorge. I saw you had your video at 2 mins, like the instructions said. Mine came up a few seconds short
but it didn't say we couldn't be under 2 mins. (LOL)

"Who is Pepe Le Pew" or "Sam the Sheepdog" ?

I thought everybody knew these 2 guys... shows my age I guess...

be blessed
Richard

I'll post a picture of the cards when I get back to my lab tonight.

Regards

Sweet!

I love it. Good job Jorge...

That's awesome ... great sense of humor.

Greg