I wholly agree with this for home hobbyists. I have very spotty cell service where I live, and I’ve seen enough times that my Photons lose their wi-fi connection that I would like to be able to have two Argons on a small network. I have no trouble with the new limitation of 10 devices to be considered a micro network, I understand Particle’s needs, but the limit of one gateway seems unnecessarily restrictive.
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This is an interesting one. This configuration might be used by a super-user to build a network of 100 temperature sensors for their home (10 per room!), or might conceivably be used by a factory to build a network of 100 devices to monitor the state and uptime of highly utilized industrial equipment.
First, that's a bit insulting. Did you really mean to officially state that the only in-home use that Particle can envision for their hardware is temperature sensors? I definitely expect to have use for more than 10 but fewer than 30 mesh devices on my network. So I will need your $120/year plan. Even if I want a Boron on the network for reliability, that's still only $36/year instead of $120.
Anyway, when you say you will honour the original pricing for pre-order hardware, does that mean all the hardware on my pre-orders will get the old plan? So if I buy a new Xenon later I suddenly go from $36 to $120 per year for my network? Does particle have a record of which devices are part of my pre-order?
And do I have to set up the network right away? It sounds like you're saying set up my network anid then you will waive the fees? I expect it to take me a very long time to bring all my mesh devices online as I will be building a variety of different nodes myself. Do i have to contact you every time I add a device?
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Hi @will,
I too would very much value the ability to use multiple gateways in development without having to pay the $10/month. Especially for the ability to use a more data intensive application with wifi or ethernet gateway but still have the backup of Cellular if the wifi drops (you could still have each gateway count toward the total of 10 micro networks so that no-one takes advantage).
I doubt I’ll be able to get all the development done in the 3 month timeframe of free service.
I’d also like to experiment with a >10 unit network, but that’s not absolutely critical to my current use cases.
I’d like to suggest that if these are in personal or development use - non-commercial, that we could use a network of 10 units of any combination without having the pricing tier go up - just having to pay for the devices as if they were standalone units. It seems like this would encourage more mesh developments and I don’t feel like the cost would be significant to Particle, but it could make all the difference to other bootstrappers like me!
J
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@JumpMaster @Ric thank you for the feedback. I can understand how network redundancy (multiple Wi-Fi gateways, or a cellular backup) would be valuable in the contexts that you're describing. As I mentioned in my post, we'd be happy to honor our original preorder pricing to ensure that you're able to achieve the desired result with your network.
I'll also take your feedback back to our internal team for discussion and follow-up here with the outcome.
@DevRandom I certainly didn't mean to imply that and, looking back at the words that I wrote, I don't think that I did. From my experience, temperature and humidity sensing is a very common in-home use case for Particle and was one of the first applications that many Particle employees, including myself, deployed with Mesh in our own homes.
Here's how we'll do it – preorder customers will be put on a special billing "plan" which has two characteristics:
- For every Argon or Boron in your account, you'll be charged "standard" Device OS costs:
- Free Device OS for first 100 Wi-Fi devices
- Free Device OS for 3 months for cellular devices, with our $2.99 (not $4.99) rate thereafter
- You can configure your first 10 gateways in any combination that you want, without fear of being charged anything beyond the established standalone Device OS charges above. This plan captures the commitments we made around pricing as communicated in the preorder period.
All gateways configured beyond the first ten will be subject to our newly established network pricing.
What I want to communicate is that you don't need to be worry about being charged in the meantime and that you should feel free to configure your devices as soon as you receive them. You will not have to contact us each time you configure a new device, and billing will be automated by the rules outlined above for preorder customers on this plan.
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Thanks Will. I’m happy with that. It’s great to be able to provide feedback so directly.
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I would also like to agree with a need for hobbyists and Developers to have at least one micro Network that allows High availability for free. It doesn’t need to have the full capabilities of the 30-plus devices but just small enough to develop and test. I only bought nine mesh devices. 6 Xenon, 2 argon, and one boron. I’d like to put them all on the same network. Going forward, I do have an idea for a larger mesh Network that would require High availability and I wouldn’t mind paying the $10. I believe that is a fair price for what you are offering. If it comes to it, I will contact support to honor the pre-order terms. Thank you @will.
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I feel that's 100% fair and sticking to what was initially promised.
I think we all knew pricing, terms, and specs were subject to change as the whole MESH project progressed from concept to finished and ready to ship status.
I also feel pricing and options will probably still change some as time progresses and more real-world user feedback come in.
I know the MESH project was a massive amount of work to get to this point and I'm eager to try it all out!
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Here’s a few questions I’m wondering.
If I have a boron can I have it act as a dumb mesh node without any cellular functionality and keep it in a micro network, or do borons/argons automatically become gateways? I ask because if I want to have a wired network but don’t have enough xenons to cover all the nodes I’ll need, I’d like to be able to sub in some of the higher models without the price jump that unnecessarily redundant gateways would cause.
How does one go about managing and deleting mesh networks? I can see a new network tab on the console but it doesn’t give me any way to remove the network or see/edit the network password.
How can I change a Xenon from a node to a gateway and vice-versa?
Apologies if I’m veering slightly off topic with some of these but they felt relevant given the new angle of per network and gateway pricing.
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my goal was to have a home mesh that over the next year would grow to 6 xenon with a boron and an argon. however both gateways do not necessarily need to be active at the same time for the first year. what i decided to do was buy one of each device and an ethernet feather for testing, to see, no offense, if it all actually worked before buying 5 more xenon. so what i would like to ask about is this phrasing that the pre-order plan applies only to pre-order hardware. does that mean that as the pre-order plan applies to my use case that i will not be allowed to expand the xenon device count ? or, once i determine that they all play nice together and over the cloud can i add 5 xenon to fill out my mesh? thanks.
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@will
I like it, thanks for listening!
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There is a feature in the setup process where you choose if you are going to use a xenon with the Ethernet or not. I’ve been able to change that by re-adding a xenon that is already on my account, giving me all the setup options again.
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Thanks all for the helpful discourse!
Once you have removed all nodes from a mesh network, the network will be removed.
I think these features haven't been added yet. The problem with changing the network password would require all devices in the mesh to be notified of the change otherwise they won't be able to reconnect next time. That's fine for devices that can be reached at that point, but how to deal with actually absent devices that may be re-joining some time later.
I also (currently) don't see an API to change the designation of a device (end-node, repeater, gateway) on the fly.
But it's early days 
I think Will has already addressed that when he said
It's not that your devices are pre-order devices but you as an individual will be treated as pre-order customer, even if you add more devices to your account later
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ok, thanks ScruffR. i guess my question revolved around an interpretation on my part that pre-order plan pricing "might" be limited to the hardware in the actual pre-order. [see quote from will below] but you seem to be saying that as a pre-order customer any new hardware i add will be covered by the pre-order pricing plan. thanks!
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At least that is how I interpret @Will's statement
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@will Thanks for the feedback, seems fair for the pre-order tier pricing. 
I am having a hard time with this new pricing. Let’s say, for example, I want to have two sensors in my basement. With 2nd gen, I could use two photons and it would cost $.58/month. With 3rd gen, if I want to have one sensor be an argon and one be a zenon, it’ll be $2.99/month. So I’d be paying 5x as much! For my needs, this is a very realistic scenario. So I’ll have to stay with 2nd gen, just because of the cost. In my mind, mesh pricing would have made more sense if structured as per the old pricing, where each device was a fixed cost per month.
For my scenario above, is there any way to move to third gen without having to pay 5x as much?
Thx.
@johnwest80, the first 100 devices are free except for the Boron SIM fees if you use the Particle eSIMs (vs 3rd party nano SIMs). You can have one or more meshes, each comprised of one gateway (Argon, Boron or any mesh device with an Ethernet shield) and up to (but not exceeding) 10 Xenons as part of the 100 devices. 
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I understand the first 100 are free. I’m talking about issues with pricing past the free tiers…
@johnwest80 — keep in mind that under the Mesh Device Cloud pricing, your first 10 micro mesh networks (up to 10 devices, and 1 gateway in each network) are free. If you are doing a project in your basement with a single network using one Argon + one Xenon , you should be able to stay within the free Device Cloud pricing.