Hello there! Thank you for being a part of the forum community and for your eagerness to share your technical issue with SparkFun’s Technical Support moderators and forum users alike!

Pre-post troubleshooting and searching for available information

Note
Technical Support Moderators are available on the forums Monday through Friday from 9AM to 5PM Mountain Standard Time

Before posting on the forums seeking Technical Assistance from SparkFun’s team of moderators consider looking at our general hardware and software troubleshooting tips & information present on the SparkFun website. SparkFun’s engineers, catalog managers and customers all provide lots of valuable information in all sorts of places on the SparkFun website such as comments sections, product reviews and on these forums. Below is a simple guide designed to get you started on the right path in your pursuit of knowledge & will greatly improve your troubleshooting skills starting out:

Troubleshooting tips

Not working as expected? In this tutorial, we will be exploring a few general troubleshooting tips and possible solutions that frequently come up within Technical Support’s FAQ and solutions: SparkFun Troubleshooting Tips

Product Pages

You may also want to look at the product page for the product(s) you are working with. The SparkFun website has a plethora of valuable information on the product page such as documents including PCB design files, schematics, tutorials, product photographs, Support Tips provided by SparkFun’s support Moderators, comments sections, product reviews, GitHub repositories, videos, etc. All of this information can be found starting with a product page!

A great example is the SparkFun RedBoard Product Page

Use the SparkFun Community Pages

If the above article does not seem to be useful for solving your particular issue(s) & you have exhausted all of the material on the SparkFun website try searching the SparkFun forums for an existing thread. An already existing topic may offer information and possibly even a direct solution to the problem you are experiencing. One does not need to create an account on the SparkFun forums to see the topics that are posted to begin looking for solutions.

Creating a SparkFun forum account to post a new topic

If you feel like you have searched everywhere for a solution to no avail, now may be the time to create an account on the forums and post in the forum category that best fits your product. Keep in mind that the SparkFun Forums do have sub forums under primary categories in some cases. Be sure and look around a bit if you are not seeing anything immediately for the best possible forum for your topic.

Now you are ready to create a new forum account to post on the SparkFun forums. Keep in mind that your SparkFun customer account and your SparkFun forums account are not tied together and are separate accounts. You will need to create a new SparkFun forum account in order to post on the SparkFun forums. To create your new forum user account, use the above forum menus.

Using the forums

Now that your account is created, please include as much information about the product you are working with as possible by providing a link to the part in the SparkFun catalog and by providing the unique 5 digit part number of the part you are working with. You should also provide a front and back photo of the product or a video of the issue in action, or a screenshot where applicable.

Checkout GitHub

If you are working with a code issue while using code written by a SparkFun employee within a SparkFun product tutorial, please consider submitting a GitHub issue ticket associated with that product including the problem you are running into. Keep in mind that tutorial comments should be used only if the inherent code does not function in the way we advertise. SparkFun does not offer assistance on custom modifications to our existing code. SparkFun does not offer assistant for code that was not written by a SparkFun employee either. Consider posting in the Community category if you would like to see if the community can assist you.

Technical Support

Technical Support forum moderators are here to support SparkFun customers with our products and customers who have purchased SparkFun products from official SparkFun distributors. We are here to troubleshoot product issues and test both hardware and software problems against SparkFun’s internal and external documentation, tests and information to resolve issues for our customers. Technical Support Moderators have the ability to issue tickets associated with refunds and replacements in addition to performing repairs and conducting tests on returned products.

In some instances where a Technical Support moderator cannot answer your question we may redirect you to other resources not associated with SparkFun to try and point you in the right direction to help resolve your issue.

Once you have created your post a Technical Support Representative will review the topic shortly and will respond to the post in about 3 estimated business days if it fits our criteria for technical support eligibility.

Hardware testing on returns takes up to 10 business days after the product(s) have been received into SparkFun’s facility. Due to COVID-19, hardware testing may take up to 15 business days

There are 3 primary categories that topics fall into on the SparkFun forums:

Topics which Technical Support moderators can assist with - response time - 3 estimated business days.

  • Product(s) appear to have a defect in hardware.
  • Product(s) do not work as advertised per our hook-up guide or other documentation on the SparkFun website product page.
  • Code written by a SparkFun employee and published in a official SparkFun product tutorial or hook-up guide is throwing compile errors.
  • Topics in which simple questions about a SparkFun product are asked which are re-searchable using information available on the SparkFun website .
  • Topics which have simple questions about the compatibility of several SparkFun products for a project(be sure to post in the projects category)…
    Topics with issues which may require an Electrical Engineer to review and reply to - Response time is dependent on issue - Some topics may not receive a response. * - Topics which state a specific fundamental advertised feature of a product is not working indicating a design flaw.
  • Topics which ask about features of a chip which are not mentioned within the hook-up guide of the product.
  • Topics which discuss discrepancies in electrical characteristics associated with components or PCB design related issues within a SparkFun product.
    Topics which require no response from a SparkFun employee - No response time. * - Topics where a customers question(s) or issues(s) were answered correctly by another forum user within the community.
  • All topics within any forum category other than “SparkFun products” or “SparkFun Education”.
  • Topics that are not relevant to the forum category(these topics will be moved to the appropriate category in most cases).
  • Topics which pertain specifically to a 3rd party IDE, SDK, or other environments which are not owned or developed by SparkFun.
  • Topics which specifically pertain to code not written by SparkFun.

Keep in mind that there are exceptions which are handled on a case by case basis which may fall into or deviate from the above examples.

SparkFun Technical Support Moderators may need some personal information to assist further in some circumstances such as Return Merchandise Authorization(RMA) processes and we may ask for this information via private messages. A technical Support Representative will never ask you to share personal information publicly on the SparkFun forums. Always double check and make sure the individual who is private messaging you is a verified SparkFun Technical Support Moderator or employee. The best way to tell is by the red coloring in the name and the “SFE-TS-Moderator” title underneath.

Feedback

If you have feedback on anything associated with the forums including functionality, spelling errors, response time from moderators, etc, please private message TS-Feedback and we will look into your feedback as soon as possible.
For forum system issues, please email IT@sparkfun.com