Done nothing but read manual for a month

Troubleshooting
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And still can’t figure out how to get what I want done.

It shouldn’t be this hard to graph data, maybe an integration with plotly would help the pain points but as it is, this is a nightmare to figure out.

I have the sensors working and posting data, I NEED this data graphed and logged into a database, I needed it three weeks ago, who can I pay to make that happen, and not some ridiculous $10,000 sum from a development house.

I have also seen probably most every method on this forum, and at one point or another they all fail to deliver a working graph service. Spinning up two docker instances for grafana and Telegraf is about 30 steps more than should exist to accomplish this goal in my eyes, if it takes virtual machines and containers just to graph data IoT will stagnate more than it already is.

What I’m getting at is simply make this easier, or provide for hire consulting for a reasonable rate that is sustainable, but allows for higher quality projects to see the light of day, instead of consumer device drivel that logs the size of coffee pod I committed to a landfill for keurig.

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@Cloud, you’re absolutely right. The whole process is not intuitive and those of us who have figured it out quickly lose sight of the hurdles we faced along the way. Once you see it work, it seems so obvious. Perhaps this is why Monday morning quarterbacking is so popular!

What I can tell you from my personal experience is that what you want to accomplish can be done with just a few hours of work. I’ve used many cloud services, but the one I’ve settled on is Grovestreams. They offer data storage, graphing (visualization) in many formats, alerting, etc., and the founder, Mike Mills, is incredibly helpful.

If you take a quick look at Grovestreams and find their terms palatable, I can help you get what you want, if it’s as simple as you state above: storage and graphing. Basically, it’s the following steps:

Create a Grovestreams account
Create a new organization entity within that account
Create a component within that organization
Create streams for the data elements you want to store/graph
Create a webhook to get your data to Grovestreams from your Particle device
Add a few lines of code in your program to format the data for the webhook and call Particle.publish() with that formatted string.

That’s it. If you need some help, please reply or PM me. I’ve been wanting to create a Particle-Grovestreams tutorial and perhaps this can be my motivating event!

Obviously, my choice of Grovestreams is personal and others certainly prefer other services/approaches to satisfy this type of need.

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Thanks for the offer. Truly appreciate it.

https://grovestreams.com/pricing.html

On their pricing page, it says “Content Access Security” is only available on a $495 a month plan, that is unworkable, I am in the cannabis industry, and I need secure content, and not to pay another $5,000 a year for the pleasure.

I would prefer it be my own personal service, not a 3rd party for that very specific reason, I work in an industry that is still legal grey area Federally.

http://commongarden.org/

Common Garden is what I would prefer to use as I can own every piece of the stack, but Getting Particle to work with Johnny-Five isn’t simple.

And the creators of that project, have ZERO interest in working with Particle’s difficult Development tools, They have stated they are making the Tessel 2 and Rasp Pi first class Citizens, even the Rasp Pi Zero gets first class treatment, and it doesnt even have native internet!

That is a huge red flag to me with Particle, that experienced developers are NOT-INTERESTED in it at all, and moving on to things that run Node.Js natively instead of through SDK and firmware wrappers.

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Did they state why they weren't interested? I found some clues:

Grow-IoT is a full javascript based IoT stack

The Particle devices don't run Javascript. That's not to say that making it work is not possible but:

Current status is pre-alpha.

Which makes it understandable that they do not (yet) want to invest resources into getting anything to work when they're still focusing on getting it to work in the first place. But like they mentioned:

Eventually we'll be making libraries for other languages (not everything can or should run a highlevel language like Javascript) like Lua and python.

So there are plans to support other platforms/languages, considering they agree not everything should/needs to run javascript.

On a higher level, I think you might be having unrealistic expectation of what Particle is supposed to do. Holding them accountable for providing Graphing solutions is similar to expecting a car salesman to teach you to drive.
Theoretically they could, but it's not what they're into. If they do offer that service, then great. But it's a service, not an obligation. It's much the same for Particle. They build the tools, and give you what's needed for you to interact with them. You don't need much more than what they're currently providing. Having them create integrations for you to graph data is certainly not their business, even disregarding the fact that the graphing tool that might be perfect for you, probably isn't for someone else. The conversation above highlights that perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, it'd certainly be nice of Particle to provide easier methods to hook up devices to other platforms, but that's not their 'thing', and 'blaming' it on them for not having it documented, or provided is therefore not 'fair' in my opinion.It's not up to them to provide means to use your data nor teach you how to use it.
That said, it seems that Particle agrees that it can make things easier, and is already making an effort in doing so. Webhooks were the first part of the equation, and the Console seems to suggest new, top secret, integrations are underway.

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One of the main Developers of that actually have been to my facilities just recently, I know all about “pre-alpha” status, its actually a disclaimer so some asshole doesn’t think its finished, because its not, but the core functionality of how devices connect is.

That being said the other platforms and languages are what I stated, Raspberry pi’s and Tessel 2 and C.H.I.P. boards are first class citizens, all others are if they feel very compelled, IE, companies pay them flat out.

They will just continue to add compelling killer features that certain boards and hardware will not have otherwise until they do pay them, its quite crafty actually. For instance, no one else has a Neural Learning Networks for devices being one of them.

And to retort to your terrible analogy of a car salesman, is particle a car salesman? I thought they were the manufacturer and WE were the car salesman. That is a better structural model analogy don’t you think? And that being the case, yes, the manufacturer absolutely teaches the car salesman everything possible about the vehicle he will be selling, or he won’t be selling very many of them.

I think you have low expectations of companies responsibilities with their products, I for one have much higher expectations in all avenues of business process and systems management, maybe it’s because my industry is held under a microscope, and all my product have to be independently lab tested and ZERO tolerance on pollutants etc that I feel companies that offer hardware, should have all documentation and abilities for that hardware cleanly and easily available to their customer.

And they should strive to have more than the companies 5 years ago offered, especially with millions in funding, millions in funding buys alot of developers in Hong Kong and India. Alot. And when you take Venture Capital, you open yourself up to these sorts of gripes, since your funding is public knowledge, and some of the people on this board, have money in VC hedge funds that are invested in Particle, if not personally.

IF all particle is doing is partnering with the likes of Keurig to log the size of K-Cup used, such a waste of human ingenuity and money, effort, time. Keurig is a terrible company to partner with, they are directly responsible for more landfill waste in the last 5 years, than the previous 50 in the Coffee Inudustry, that is BAD, and no amount of smart devices will ever change or skew that fact.

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So them you praise for holding out unless being payed, yet Particle is to blame if there are no integrations with whatever platform one can come up with. Doesn't sound too fair.

Alright, fair enough, makes sense. The manufacturer tells the salesman everything he can about his/her product, he documents it if you will. He can not, however, tell you how to use it. Some drive cars casually, others build them into hot rods, others go racing, or jumping some other cars. Is the manufacturer still responsible for making sure every scenario is planned for, or should he just provide adequate tools to be used?
There's only so much he can accommodate for, and though it's commendable if he ventures into ways for providing for multiple uses, that's not the main goal. So yes, they teach you everything there is about the product, but they shouldn't be expected to teach you how to use it. (Which is true for the car salesman as well. They tell you everything about the car, but learning how to drive is up to you).

Not sure about that. Without a doubt they should support the product they're selling and keep it up to the best of their abilities. I need to be realistic about what that entails though. I've been trying to 'automate' my room for the past couple of years, but it's nor working out just yet. Should I now 'blame' Particle for not providing a one click Home Automation integration? Is Particle a bad company because popular open-source home automation stacks haven't integrated Particle yet? Or should I be checking in with myself, either lacking skills, time, or perhaps willingness to pay someone else for their efforts?

Not sure how this is relevant, but I'm willing to say they offer more than most other solutions out there, five years ago, and now. It's not like they're grabbing the money and running away with it either. Development is ongoing, and improvement are made weekly. They're just not yet at the Microsoft level where they can buy a company to make them something. Takes a bit of time and effort.

Again, not quite sure how this is relevant. It's one of their customers, and what they do with the chips/services Particle provides is entirely up to them (kind of the point I'm trying to make). If saving the planet is the main goal, you might as well abandon all modern societies, since those produce more landfill waste than our caveman ancestors. Perhaps the key in reducing some of that waste lies in collecting data which I'm guessing is what they're doing. Then again, wasn't sure how this was relevant, so my comments might not be either.

All I was trying to say was that the company you buy something from is not responsible for how you use their product. The best they can do it tell you how it can (and perhaps should) be used, and then it's up to you. It's great if a such company is willing to go further and provide you with additional support and tools, but it shouldn't be an obligation.

Luckily Particle is going further and trying to build integrations, a process which takes time. Webhooks allow you to customize that in the mean time.

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I'm sensing some hostility.

Did someone miss their morning cup of joe?

@Cloud, how about posting data to a repository (Google-like) and running your own analytics?

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@Cloud Have you checked out these two options for graphing your data?

Easy and free solution is: www.Ubidots.com

Professional and more complicated is Microsoft Power BI which is what I’m playing with now: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/

I have the Particle Photon sending data via a Webhook every 30 seconds, Microsoft Azure Event Hub picks that webhook data up and then Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics pushes that data into an Azure Table Database. You can then use Microsoft Power BI to graph that data out in a ton of different ways and share it with the world.

It’s not the cheapest solution, but it can reliably receive 1 million events per second without breaking down if your wanting to scale something to higher volumes that might be right for you.

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it is not difficult at all to add wifi to a pi zero if having that would make things wonderful for you.