[feasibility] publish to google Pub/Sub multiple times per second

Troubleshooting
1

Hi everybody!

The Goal
I plan to build a product where more than 10 sensors are connected via I2C bus and every value should be published to Pub/Sub once per second or even more frequently.

The Problem
While experimenting with a Photon and Pub/Sub integration, I noticed the limitations of how often particle.publish() could be called and also a limit on how fast Pub/Sub hooks will be executed. Pub/Sub itself does not have such strict limitations.

The Questions
Is there a way to archive my goal with the Particle platform and Photon-board, or do I need to go with something like the Intel Joule for such a data intensive application? Is it maybe possible to publish directly to Pub/Sub without using the Integration and the particle.publish() Method?

Thank you in advance :slight_smile:

2

Hi @pollf

The Particle cloud is rate limited so that all the users who in the free developer tier can get service, but Particle offers many tiers of service up to and including having your own private version of the Particle cloud.

So if you can justify the expense in your product, I am sure the Particle limitation can be lifted. You still may have limits from Google since you don’t say exactly how you are publishing to Google. I would contact Particle Sales and talk about your needs.

Another way to do this would be to have your own server on the net as the destination for your data. That might be cheaper in the long run.

2 Likes
3

Hi @bko, thanks for your reply.
Right now I use the Google Cloud Integration with Pub/Sub exactly as described in this tutorial. Do you now of a way to use PubSub directly, without particle.publish()? There is a MQTT Client available in the libraries section of the Particle IDE and a proxy to Google Pub/Sub, but I’m not sure if that is what I need and how to use it with the Photon.

4

Hi @pollf

There are lots of choices in the IoT cloud space including using a MQTT broker and direct HTTP or HTTPS access to something like Thingspeak or Ubidots. All of these are possible using a Photon but the Particle cloud and publish/subscribe methods is the easiest.

If you search around the forum here you will find that different people like different solutions and give different kinds of advise.

5

Thanks @bko! Ubidots looks very promising for my purpose.

6

My new favorite service is www.Losant.com it’s more flexible than Ubidots and provides more free service to get you started.