I am thrilled to announce the official release of the brand new Particle device setup process hosted at setup.particle.io! This new tool offers a seamless and intuitive way for users to set up new Particle devices, so you can get to building your Particle-powered projects as soon as possible! It also lets you set up your first product or add your device to an existing product.
Over the years, Particle has offered a number of different methods for setting up devices, ranging from mobile apps to web apps to command line tools. While the variety of options is useful, new browser technologies (specifically WebUSB) have made it possible to deliver a world-class setup experience for all Particle devices through a web browser. This new setup app is now the default experience for new Particle users, replacing the mobile setup apps which will be deprecated later this year (no earlier than Q3) in favor of more SDK-like tools for building Particle mobile apps.
Thank you to all our amazing beta testers for providing great input and feedback!
If you plan to deprecate the mobile apps later this year, will you add the ability to re-provision WiFi credentials over WebUSB (with skipping authentication)? Or at least keep the mobile apps in the App Store?
I understand there’s the new WebBLE interface that is supposed to do this, but we have many Photon 1 units in the field (some of which don’t already have SoftAP on them) and currently the easiest way for us to walk customers through changing WiFi credentials is listening mode + the iOS Particle app + skip authentication.
The app will be removed from the app store at a yet-to-be-determined date but all functionality of the mobile app will have a replacement in place before deprecation. There will also be thorough documentation provided for any new tools.
I am currently developing a new variant of an instrument I developed several years ago for assessment of patients with Cystic Fibrosis and other lung diseases. The initial requirement is for 15 units for a wider patient and clinician review, but I have also been asked to estimate costs for a large (250+) nation wide clinical trial. The device will transfer data for each patient session at home (typically 20 min twice daily) to a cloud database for feedback to clinicians.
I am currently developing using a B524 BSOM but am also interested in possible using a Photon2, in part because of the relatively long connection time over 4G and in part cost.
The challenge with using WIFi rather than 4G is linking the device to either a patient’s cell phone or home WiFi modem/router.
Are there existing tools for achieving this and/or will the new system be capable of doing so,
When will Photon2’s be available to order - I initially only need a couple for evaluation against the B524’s.
Hi,
there is this library that allows you to set WiFi:
I believe it just got updated for the Photon2.
There is also this free Android app:
Regarding that challenge, no matter what Particle or any given company can provide, you are still stuck with the millions of combinations on router brand/settings/bands/compatibility. That’s the real challenge for WiFi-based products.
Best
PS: your product seems great!
@gusgonnet Thanks. This project has certainly been interesting. It provided data for one element of my son’s PhD project. It has been a steep learning curve - I am a retired physicist who used to program in Fortran back in the 80’s before moving into a senior R&D management role. C++ and the IoT world are far different from programming PDP11’s and vector processors for real time data acquisition. I am naive newbie and value (and at times am absolutely dependent upon) assistance from people on this forum.
We have recently received a very small grant from a CF charity to develop the next phase. It remains a voluntary effort on my part but the funding will enable us to get some assistance with cloud based storage and data analysis.
New Argon, out-of-the-box, successfully setup. The process was easy to do and everything went fine. (Windows 10, Chrome, new to the Particle Community)
