Argon vs. Photon

Hardware
1

Hello All,

Up until this time I have been a Particle Photon Board user. I most recently spent a great a deal time and effort in August 2020 getting my Particle Photon to reconnect to some old hardware and quite a bit of code rework (thanks to the forums for the help). I have been using the Particle Photon for several years and have had great success with my projects and my needs.

I’m interested in possibly exploring working with the Argon but I’m not sure if I gain any advantages. It’s all about staying current and up-to-date with the latest technology (which in comparison to some of the other boards from Particle, you can say I’m behind the eight (8) ball).

My biggest fears are about using hardware that will be discontinued in some time. I don’t know if that will happen to the Photon, in which case I will need to learn and redesign all sorts of things. At the same time, I don’t know if Argon is leaps and bounds better than Photon and will be around more or longer etc. I would also not want to go through the headache of coding for Argon or another board now that I am much more familiar with Photon, assuming much of the code from Photon can work with Argon.

Also a very good chance that I eventually deploy one of my projects into a future product - but, I want to be working on hardware that will be relevant at the time/future. I just don’t know if it’s worth moving to Argon vs Photon.

I was wondering if anyone switched from the Photon to Argon and why? What were some of the big reasons? I don’t yet know how I would incorporate the Bluetooth capabilities, but maybe someone can help explain that.

Regards,

-Hatch

2

I would probably stick with the Photon, for now. The Photon is currently in Generally Available “GA” lifecycle. There is a lot of time and several steps including Not Recommended for New Designs (NRND), Deprecated, Last Buy, and End of Support, as described in the lifecycle policy.

In terms of general user firmware, the Photon and Argon are quite similar and often the code can just be recompiled for the other with no changes.

There are important differences in hardware, which will affect some projects, including no 5V tolerance, DAC, or SoftAP on the Argon. However, the Argon adds Bluetooth LE support, lower power usage in some modes, and support for LiPo rechargeable batteries.

There will be cloud support for the Photon for quite some time because the Photon and P1 have nearly identical cloud requirements, and the P1 is an enterprise product that is still widely deployed in new designs.

In any case, you may want to play around with the Argon just to get some experience with Gen 3 (nRF52840-based) devices, but the Photon isn’t going away any time soon and there will be plenty of warning.

3 Likes
3

Thanks for the comprehensive post! I’ll stick with Photon for now, use it to capacity in which I can and deal with the future, in the future!

Thanks, time to order some Photons.

Regards,

Jason

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