Hello everyone,
I am new here and to the Particle hardware but have used the Arduino products now for about a year. I don’t even have my products yet as I have only ordered a few days ago so I can’t play, which is killing me but I will get over it. I have built a controller with the Arduinos that allows me to manage 120 meters of NeoPixels over a XBee network which I thought was real cool until I found the photon now I have all kinds of new ideas for that project. : )
This brings me to my questions, forgive me if they a stupid questions but I have no hardware yet to play with and figure it out on my own…
If I use a Core/Photon and plug it in to my computer via USB can I write a program that can read files off my computer via that USB port?
Once I have written a program on my Particle device and it’s available to the cloud can I then use the cloud to directly connect to that device using a mobile phone.
Here is the goal…
Write a webserver on the Particle device (been writing custom web servers for years)
Use the could to connect to the Particle device via my mobile phone.
Have the Particle device now server web pages and content directly to my mobile phone.
This would allow me to create a situation where I did not have to open ports on my router but could use the cloud to establish the connection between the two then, once connected, communicate and pass data without using the cloud.
If this can be done I would love to read up on how that is done while I wait for my products to arrive. And was hoping I could be pointed in the right direction to do this. I hope to see my Core kit arrive in the next week or so and would like to hit the ground running.
Thanks in advance for any pointers, links, ideas I can explore.
Digital Janitor
Thanks
Welcome to the forums!
Do you need high-speed data throughput between the Particle device and your mobile phone? If not, you could simply route all your calls to setup, configure, or control your Particle device through the cloud.
And to answer your earlier question, no, it would be pretty difficult to get your Particle device to “read a file” off of your computer. Why do you need to do this?
Hi Harrison,
I am the guy you spoke with so late the other night, thanks again for your help then and for your help now.
I want to do this to allow the Particle device to act as a web server that can serve files from a chosen folder on my computer. This would allow me to create a mobile app that could connect to it and get content from it.
For example…
Say I am at a clients location and realize I need a file. I would then be able to open my mobile phone app connect to the Particle device and access the file to get the information I needed for the client.
OR
I have written a web interface in HTML5 that I can connect to from my mobile phone via a browser which allows me to listen to the MP3 library that is on my computer (380 gig). This allows me to use my cell network to listen to my music anywhere I am as I have not found a phone with 380 gig of space on it yet. 
To make this work I had to open a port on my router and NAT the traffic. If I did not have a static IP address I would have had to use Dyn-DNS or something like that but I do so I set up a the DNS so that I can reach it via an actual domain name. Now I can listen to my music over my mobile phone any time I want anywhere I am at as long as I at least have my cell connection.
If the Particle Device would allow me to access files from my computer as a web server then I could create a device that you could plug in to your USB port and connect to, without opening a port on your router, via a mobile app or mobile browser. Then I could use my HTML5 interface via the Particle device to listen to my music.
To answer you throughput question, I want enough speed to stream a song through my interface. This is why I was hoping that I could use the cloud to have my particle device available so that a mobile app could then connect to the cloud to find out where the device is then connect to the device in a peer 2 peer setup. Then my throughput would be based on my cell connection and my home internet speeds.
Thanks again!
Digital Janitor