I’m talking about pricing past the free tiers, where you have a product offering. After that, a two device mesh would be $2.99 a month. Two non-mesh devices would be $.39x2, or $.78 (down to $.58 with more deployed devices). That’s a huge difference when you’re talking about scale.
I’m hopeful that there’s a way to deploy a two-device mesh at the same cost as two non-mesh devices. @will or someone else, any thoughts?
Sure it would be nice, but I’m not yet seeing the actual need for mesh when only using two devices.
Could you maybe elaborate a bit more?
One cellular, one mesh. Much cheaper to only need one cellular enabled chip. In general, the mesh-only chips are much cheaper than the wifi or cell chips.
vs
OK, but then you'd need to compare with 2 Electrons and not 2 Photons.
Forget cell… one argon and one xenon is $2.99 a month. Two photons is $.58-$.78 a month. I don’t need to explain why I’d want to do it. I just want someone at particle to give me some hope that I could move to third gen, and maybe take advantage of a two device mesh without paying a lot more.
The price of two cellular devices would be $2.99 * 2 = $5.98 per month
The price of one cellular mesh network with one Xenon would be $4.99 * 1 = $4.99 per month
You will also save on the cost of the hardware since a Xenon costs $15 and a Boron or Electron costs $49-$69.
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.
Important to note that you can still use Argons just like you use Photons today. If you would prefer to deploy 2 Argons rather than 1 Argon and 1 Xenon, that is absolutely still encouraged with our 3rd gen hardware.
@will thx for responding. One argon and one xenon is cheaper than two argons. I’m just trying to understand why we can’t have a per chip price like with the second gen?
@johnwest80 I’m pretty sure what Will said is you can have per device pricing with argon exactly as second gen if you don’t want to set up a mesh network.
How will product management work (for when we resell this in a package) when we have customers with multiple mesh networks (across several different sites)? Will we be able to duplicate network credentials? and what would happen if a device is installed on a different network or is moved by the client to another network (is the mesh pricing controlled by limiting the number of devices with valid credentials for a network, or is it computed based on monitoring how many devices communicate through a given gateway?)?
Before worrying to much about Mesh and the new devices you should get some and test them to make sure they preform as you want them to.
The Argon and Xenon’s are not near as stable as the Photon, P1, and Electrons are now. This is to be expected considering how much work has went into the older generation equipment.
If you wanting a rock solid solution for now stick with the Photons and Electrons based on my experience with the Xenon’s, Argon, and Boron over the last 3 days.
Makes sense, we have a couple photons that we are doing some testing with while we wait for our mesh devices to ship. One of the things we are trying to figure out, is if our initial approach/assumptions will hold true. With the way our deployment would work, having a mesh pricing per node (even if it is more expensive) might be easier (most of our devices would be mounted on mobile platforms in areas without wifi). We were thinking, that rather than purchasing a wifi router + ap(s) for each site, we would just use the mesh network functionality to cover the area; although, we may end up just purchasing some wifi gear and using photons/P0s.
Question for Will, General Manager:
My first "mesh" application is for one Xenon, connected to a pressure sensor, bluetooth, connecting to a Boron in a monitoring environment for liquid level in a tank. The Xenon would provide me pressure, through a sensor. This hardly seems like a "mesh" application. I considered it a wireless connection, and I foolishly guessed that it would not add to the monthly cost that I have with the Electrons that we presently use in this application. I was gearing up to replace all Electrons with Borons in anticipation of this added functionality. Could particle make an exception to the $4.99 per month charge for one Xenon and one Boron? I think it should not be considered a mesh, but just a wireless connection. I think this is a reasonable proposal, and might be a good way to attract people to trying these products. Often one thing leads to another. I agree that one Boron and two xenons is a mesh. Thanks for considering my idea.
Tom
This is a HUGE hangup for me and it didn't seem to be clarified, or at least I didn't see it directly addressed.
I do not care one bit about being cloud connected. I purchased solely based on the communication about the locally based features (mesh) which is why I referred the quote above. I was under the impression that I would not need to pay a monthly fee because all local xenons on a single mesh network would be free as the comment stated. There would be no external communication, all internal. An Argon is used to talk to a local server for data collection. This along with the promise of local based dev tool would allow me to be independent of an internet connection.
I would like some clarification on this because my needs and future product development will far exceed 30 units in the home setting. A single time exception for me isn't what I'm looking for because this is something that will be rolled out to clients, again in a home setting. Not a business where tons of money is being saved/earned from production tweaks etc as mentioned in the reason behind the pricing change.
So if someone could please help clarify things for me about local based systems/communications that will use no external communication, I would appreciate. The sooner the better since I'll be holding up on any further purchases since it would exceed the 30 unit limit on your $10 plan.
I feel the need to contribute to this thread also. We have a consumer product in development and have been planning to deploy using Particle Mesh. The main reasoning for doing so is power. To have a Xenon sipping power in a battery powered device which is able to communicate with an Argon which is plugged in to the mains is very appealing. However the cost to do so is now prohibitive. Two Argon devices connected directly to the cloud is $0.78 (2*$0.39) vs $2.99 for the Mesh setup. As I’m sure you can appreciate, in the consumer market it would be an uphill struggle to charge $36+ per year for such a solution, and yet $9.50 is much more realistic. It seems a shame that the flexibility of your new hardware lineup is held back by the pricing model for the monthly fee.
So…how do we go about claiming that pre-order pricing “plan” ? Also I assume at this juncture I still can not add 2 gateways to micro network? that’s really all I want. 2 Argons on a tiny home network.
Currently you can’t even add a second Argon to a mesh network even if you were prepared to pay the HA fee 
Well that’s annoying. I mean that’s a core reason people even think about using a mesh network.
It’s coming. That feature just isn’t ready for release yet, they’re still working on it.
Looking forward to this! Is there anyway I can add more than 10 Xenons to a single Argon, currently though?
I’ve done this and so can you since there is no restriction in place to limit the amount of Xenons you add to a Mesh Network.