How do I get documentation (datasheets, schematics, Eagle files, Arduino sketches, etc) for retired products that no longer have listings after the website overhaul?
Customer support has been of little assistance since I reached out at the beginning of February but I am hoping to avoid days of scouring the internet looking for whatever part numbers I can read off the boards or components. Molly R told me they have access to the information but she is not authorized to give it to me based on direction from her supervisor.
I miss the website that existed until three months ago that had ALL the documentation for EVERYTHING Sparkfun ever sold. Please bring it back.
Hello!
I agree! I have two examples of a product that was prominent on the old site for a good start with infrared communications. I found one item inside it as also retired, that was the remote that was enclosed within. Fortunately I have printouts of the pages for the kitâs use, but it would be nice to see the originals, without digging within the contents of the wayback machine for it.
Gregg Doctor Who 8
That would be ideal, but I get the feeling that company leadership is not interested in that, even though it would be an easy win to support long-time customers like me. The COO sent me an email a couple weeks back basically saying I was on my own and to try the forum, even though all the items for which I was seeking support were bought during the era where âlifetime supportâ was included with every purchase. I sent something back to her but have received no response.
Hello!
Curious. Did you try their support alias? I needed to do that for something I bought over eleven years ago. And it was actually found and placed up for reference only. Now for my problem I did find the learn area does have the stuff for the IR set, but my efforts to see what the detector saw were all of not very helpful.
Gregg Doctor Who 8
Fully agree with this statement. Please keep the old information available. It will support many people directly and save a lot of questions on this forum. The information is there already anyway..
Hello!
A long time ago from the point of view of the website. It concerned a cluster of screens such as what would be found inside flip phones.
Gregg Doctor Who8
Emailing that many might have triggered our anti-bot/spam filtering stuffâŚit doesnât like blanket emails
I agree with what everyone has said as well, but these decisions are above me - itâs made my day-to-day much more difficult lolâŚbut apparently there are larger factors at play
The main workaround I use without needing to refer to internal stuff is using the wayback machine for the productsâŚany from 2024 or earlier are decent candidates
Itâs not ideal and it loads really slow, but itâs better than not being able to access them IMO
I received responses from Molly R. and Kristen M. after sending the email to those addresses on March 31, so no filtering occurred. Subsequent emails were sent only to service@sparkfun.com, support@sparkfun.com, and the COO, but I did not receive anything other than automated responses until this evening, 16 days and three emails after Kristen M. told me that I would not receive support from the staff and that I could try the forum.
I understand the decision about the website may be above your position, but that feedback is not helpful to solving this issue so is irrelevant. The Internet Archive worksâŚslowly. As I stated in my first post, I am hoping to avoid days of scouring the internet looking for documentation that Sparkfun says they have available internally. All the items I have purchased directly from Sparkfun included âlifetime support,â and all I really wanted for that was access to documentation. Please note that I know the policy changed a few years back. I have been assigned to active duty military service on a couple of ships since 2019 and am just now returning to my hobby pursuits.
The best answer is to honor the promise made to customers and make documentation readily available or have customer service provide it upon request.
As an aside, your avatar is incredibly ironic with regards to my request. I want to Read The Full Manual, but Sparkfun will not let me. Please make that manual (your previously available documentation) available so that I may read it.
Hello!
One of the others proposed a site idea, that of placing the old site, (if it still exists) on a site named, wait for it, Archive of old Sparkfun site now donât try it. It wonât work. But what about setting that up?
That would be ideal, assuming the old site is still on a server somewhere. They would probably need to strip some functionality out of the archive to prevent clashes with the new site.
I donât know if Sparkfun has the ability / manpower to do it right now though but I do hope it can be done sometime in the future. There was a lot of useful data in the old site thatâs currently not easily available.
Iâm sure it probably wouldnât be a trivial task, I think all we can do for now is wait and hope itâs possible.
There are some items that do not appear to have records on the Wayback Machine, such as the SparkFun Artemis SnowBoard (DEV-15839). When I search for www.sparkfun.com/products/15839 I get a message stating âHrm. The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL.â
Can I get assistance with documentation from the âinternal stuffâ for this board?
That product was a limited run of 250; itâs unlikely for something like that to be archived/scraped in timeâŚbut! Luckily that version, other than the silkscreen/printing on the PCB, was the same as thisân https://www.sparkfun.com/sparkfun-redboard-artemis.html with live docs (resources & going further at the end has the most links), so yay
If you has a list of products youâd like hunted down I can do my best to get you everything I can
[Rash conjecture from some guy]
Usually when this sort of thing happens, thereâs a simple but silent reason they canât talk about.
It could be an intellectual property-related reason. It can be a change of ownership/partner structure, merger/split, divorce, lawsuit, messy employee departure. Current or pending. An IP sharing agreement with a vendor brought to an end.
Itâs also possible that some liability exposure was discovered. For example, suppose some kid hurts themselves based on an error in an old schematic and sues SFE. We can all agree that kids hurting themselves isnât ok and one reasonable response is to pull all the old docs until theyâre updated to current standards.
Unusually, thereâs evidence that this removal was willful and it is not expected that the literature will be restored. âSorry. We took it away and itâs not coming back.â While disappointing, thatâs the answer, it says a lot, and itâs far more than most organizations will ever give.
