Background data usage of Photon

General
1

Hello,

I am reviewing background data use over WIFI via the Photon. I’ve read an old article here about this.

https://community.particle.io/t/spark-process-data-usage/15851

I have two questions:

  1. Does this still look about right (circa KB/day).

  2. Can I assume that the way to minimise background traffic (i…e non application data) would be to use MANUAL system mode and bring up the Spark connection from time to time to check for any Particle messages?

Thanks
Gary

2

That looks about right.

To reduce the amount of data usage on the Photon/P1, disconnect from the Particle cloud when not actively doing anything. However you need to balance the amount of data pinging every 15 seconds vs. the amount of data to handshake again (several K bytes).

Or you can use the Argon; if you adjust the keep-alive pings you may be able to dramatically reduce data usage to be more like the Electron. However, there are some caveats to this - if you use a long keep-alive on Wi-Fi the device may lose cloud-to-device communication (function, variable, OTA) until the next publish or keep-alive ping. But in some cases this may be acceptable.

3

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the info.

Currently using a WIFI hub with a GSM backend so don’t have the Electron efficiencies in terms of reduced Particle Cloud communication.

Our priority at present is to keep Particle Cloud data at a minimum (as well as the application data which is going to a TCP/IP socket).

However, we would like to send updates to the Photon using the Particle Cloud from time to time. If we setup a ‘Product’ in the console and check in to the Particle Cloud once a day, does the Product part of the console essentially queue up things like program updates or do they timeout in a relatively short period of time?

Thanks
Gary

PS: Thanks for the Argon info - we have some on the way to us for testing.