Hi there
I am planning to use Electron with Blynk libraries.
Has anybody some kind of experience regarding data usage.
I know it will depend of the code , but I would like get some rough idea.
Thank you
I’m not familiar with the lib, but I thought it looked kind of cool so jumped into the code for a bit. It’s not well commented, so it’s tough to say, but based on my understanding of the packets its sending, it looks like it’s a bunch of string variables. Sending everything around by JSON is pretty nice for a human reading the data stream, but it’s otherwise a very inefficient way to do comms. You’ll quite possibly be paying a data premium of 100-1000% for using Blynk, vs. a method which uses binary data.
Depending on how much you value your time vs. your data budget, this could be cheap at twice the price or a horrible deal. For us, we are using binary data because going from sending 1GB to 10GB/mo. is an unacceptable increase in data charges. If you were looking at going from 1MB to 10MB, things would look very different.
P.S.: As a general rule, I advise people to stay away from projects which are poorly commented. Blynk is certainly very weak on the comments front. Of course, you may feel that a lack of professionalism in this aspect is acceptable, and no one would fault you for it. Still, it’s worth mentioning because this kind of poor commenting tends to go hand-in-hand with having a bus factor of 1 —check out https://github.com/blynkkk/blynk-library/graphs/contributors, the difference between 1st and 2nd contributors is over 100x!-- and that means that the support and future development of the library is uncertain.
@Meson777, @kubark42, you may have wanted to consult Blynk’s own site for the answers you seek:
http://help.blynk.cc/how-to-connect-different-hardware-with-blynk/particle/particle-electron
Thanks for the link, it’s helpful for getting Blynk up and running very quickly and painlessly. Unfortunately with regards to the OP’s question, all I see at the link is a generic warning “Blynk can consume quite a lot of data!”. This statement isn’t helpful, as “quite a lot” doesn’t mean anything without context. Nor does it answer why it’s consuming a lot of data nor give alternative approaches which might be more data efficient.
None of this takes away from the author’s work, nor decreases its usefulness.
@kubark42 @peekay123
Thank you guys, very much for your comments. Both of you gave me a takeaway to dig a little more into this matters.
My point is that I am currently working in a proof of concept project which include an Electron and I looking for a dashboard with a low data budget to display monitoring values. I understand that Console is just for development purposes.
I would take the @peeky123 alternative getting info directly Blynk.
Thank you again
Check Ubidots. Works great for me. Your results might vary.
Thank you Silverminer
What do you mean with " Your results might vary."
Casually today I discovered Ubidot it seems to me that would work with Electron.
Thank you
I was using the phrase “Your results might vary” as a metaphor. A figure of speech. But, literally, I mean to say that Ubidots might not work for you as well as it does for me. I use Ubidots along with the Electron to monitor the environment of my campervan and it works very well, using less than 2MB of data per month. It might not work as well for you (but I hope it does!)
@Silverminer, OK, I understand now.
I see Ubidots like a possible Dashboard for my project .
I am reading the tutorials to get more inside on that.
Thank you very much again.
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