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Introducing the Photon

spark.io

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Re: Introducing the Photon

#12

Post by chillacy »

Preordered. I bought a spark core and now I'm a huge fan. I have other arduinos, some teensy 3.0s, and avr chips, but the nice thing about having internet in embedded projects is:

1. No more xbee

2. Replaces other hardware components, for instance no need for an RTC when you can just get the time from the internet

Their app for connecting to the network never worked for me but it had a serial fallback so that was fine.

Re: Introducing the Photon

#13

Post by zsupalla »

bjustin wrote: post #5

I read the whole page and still am not sure what this is. Is it similar to an Arduino with on board WiFi?

Yep that's right! It's an Arduino-like microcontroller development board, but with built-in Wi-Fi and an open source cloud back-end

Re: Introducing the Photon

#14

Post by elecengin »

sparticvs wrote: post #11

If you're curious how the SmartConfig protocol works, see: http://depletionregion.blogspot.com/2013/10/cc3000-smart-con...

Note that SmartConfig is a TI-specific technology only available in the Spark Core (which is based off the popular CC3000 module). The Photon is based off a Broadcom chip and only appears to support Soft-AP provisioning (where the device presents itself as an access point that a phone/tablet/computer connects to in order to configure Wifi credentials.)

Re: Introducing the Photon

#17

Post by fragmede »

As a wifi -> GPIO board, this seems to be similar to the Electric Imp, but better since it doesn't use their misguided SD card form-factor or their blink-up nonsense. They also have a web-based ide, as well as a downloadable ide. I've not tried either of those out, but the downloadable IDE (though no Linux support) means I can use the same version control tools (ie git) to manage it, which is a huge win over Electric Imp's web-only IDE.

$20 for the Spark is an interesting price point as it's cheaper than most of the Arduino wifi shields, which you still need to connect to an Arduino. It's also the same price (in many places) as a USB wifi dongle, which you need, in order to connect up a Raspberry Pi.

While this things is drastically less powerful than a Raspberry Pi, in projects where the Raspberry Pi is a simple Wifi -> GPIO board this seems perfect, especially since there's a already a mobile app.

--

I wonder if the current title, 'Spark: Introducing the $19 Photon', is as it was submitted. But either way, it's a terrible title. What's a Photon, and why is it being $19 newsworthy?

Re: Introducing the Photon

#18

Post by sparticvs »

elecengin wrote: post #14
sparticvs wrote: post #11

If you're curious how the SmartConfig protocol works, see: http://depletionregion.blogspot.com/2013/10/cc3000-smart-con...

Note that SmartConfig is a TI-specific technology only available in the Spark Core (which is based off the popular CC3000 module). The Photon is based off a Broadcom chip and only appears to support Soft-AP provisioning (where the device presents itself as an access point that a phone/tablet/computer connects to in order to configure Wifi credentials.)

My apologies. Reading the documentation page confused me, figured the Photon was the only device by the group.

Re: Introducing the Photon

#19

Post by jc4p »

elecengin wrote: post #14
sparticvs wrote: post #11

If you're curious how the SmartConfig protocol works, see: http://depletionregion.blogspot.com/2013/10/cc3000-smart-con...

Note that SmartConfig is a TI-specific technology only available in the Spark Core (which is based off the popular CC3000 module). The Photon is based off a Broadcom chip and only appears to support Soft-AP provisioning (where the device presents itself as an access point that a phone/tablet/computer connects to in order to configure Wifi credentials.)

I'm excited to try out a Spark that isn't using the SmartConfig entirely because I'm unable to get it to connect to my WiFi network at work (running an enterprise WiFi setup using Cisco's APs)
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