Setting up
About five minutes, most of which is the download. Bathcards walks you through all of this itself the first time you open it - this page is so you can see it coming.
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Install it
Run the download. It fetches what it needs, puts Bathcards on your desktop (Windows) or in your Applications folder (macOS), sets it to start when you log in, and opens it.
On Windows you will see one permission prompt, for the component that reads PowerPoint files. Saying no is not fatal - everything works except bringing in slides, and you can add it later.
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Enter your invite code
Beta places are given out by code. Paste in the one you were sent, along with your email, and that is the last time you will be asked for either. Codes work once.
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Tell it your course
Pick your programme and year. Bathcards holds the university's own unit catalogue, so choosing your course fills in your units, when each one runs and how each is assessed - you are confirming a list, not typing one.
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Add the Chrome extension
One click from the Chrome Web Store, then one click to pair it with your copy of the app. The extension is how Bathcards sees a Moodle page: it reads the page you are looking at, when you ask it to, and nothing else.
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Collect a unit
Open one of your units on Moodle and click the extension. It lists what is on the page - lectures, slides, readings - and you tick what you want. Start with one unit rather than all of them.
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Make your first cards
In the app, choose a lecture and press Make cards. You see what it is about to read and what it will cost before anything runs. A lecture takes a few seconds and costs a couple of pence, paid centrally during the beta.
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Come back tomorrow
That is the whole thing. Today will have a plan waiting, sized to the number of minutes you set, and it will keep having one.
If something goes wrong
Nothing opens after the install finishes
Bathcards serves itself at http://localhost:5173 in your browser. Try that address directly. If it does not answer, run the install again - running it a second time repairs a copy rather than starting over, and your cards are kept in a separate folder that an update cannot touch.
"That code could not be used"
Invite codes work once. If yours has already been used - or if a
stray character came along when you copied it, a trailing
# being the usual culprit - ask for a new one.
The extension does not see my unit's page
It only works on Bath's Moodle, on a unit page you are signed in to and can already see yourself. If you are on the right page and it still finds nothing, the page may be laid out in a way it has not met before - send that through the feedback box in the app and it can be fixed.
I used it before and my material has changed
Run the extension on the unit again. Lecturers replace files mid-term, and Bathcards notices when an item it already has has been replaced rather than adding a second copy of it.
Something else
There is a feedback box in the app, under Me. It goes to a person, not a queue, and it is the fastest route to getting something fixed.