Can Argon be used as a local AP without being connected to cloud?

General
1

Hi all,

I was wondering if Argon can be used as an access point to serve a local webpage without being necessarily connected to the Particle’s Cloud. A sample use case for this would be if I have a mesh out in the field where there is no WiFi and would want to view a dashboard with the collected data locally. Is that possible? I haven’t found anything in the documentation aside from that the Photon was able to do something like that.

Thank you in advance!

2

Nope, currently not.
While the Photon did support SoftAP mode and the Argon's ESP32 WiFi module would have the capability too, that feature was not implemented.

An alternative approach to that would be taking a mobile device which is capable of providing a hotspot for the Argon which it would connect to.

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@NiSt, after a gentle nudge from the always alert @nrobinson2000 (:+1:) another option might be of interest for your use-case.
With 1.3.0 and especially the recently released 1.4.0 you could also use BLE to communicate with your Argon (or any other Gen3 device).
You’d just need to register some BLE service that your mobile device can connect to in order to exchange data between the two.

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4

@ScruffR Hi Scruff! It’s been a while, but I wanted to come back to this comment–would I have to make my own mobile device app (Android/iOS) if I would want to do this?

5

You may need to (re)clarify what "this" exactly means in that sentence

The comments above should have clarified that the Argon cannot be used as AP but other options may be available for various purposes but the exact purpose dictates which option would be suitable.

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I meant if I would want to use BLE on any of the Gen3 devices and access the data in the field/on a mobile device.

7

In that case it depends on what that app should do.
If you only want to request individual data points from the device there are apps than can connect to an arbitrary device and use the standard BLE features to communicate.
With some OSs and browsers you can even connect to the device with a dedicated web page (see here).

For more sophisicated intents you’d be best served with a dedicated app tho’

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8

Thank you so much for your answer!