Feature request - New primitive Local.Publish() for WiFi Devices

[jimbol]

Is putting a feature request in the forums enough, or is there a more official Particle feature request procedure?

[Moors7]

It depends, I guess. Github would be a great ‘official’ place to request something like that, but the forums are great to discuss ideas first. Generally the forums are read by Particle as well. If not, there’s always the Elites who can pass things on to Particle. Trust me when I say we’re community advocates and are great at nagging the lovely folks over at Particle to get things done
Unfortunately, we’re not the ones who can make decisive calls regarding strategy and planning. That’s up to Particle, and more things weigh in there other than the wishes of those on the forums. That said, if we -the Elites- feel like something should be prioritized, you can bet on it we’ll make sure to mention it every so often. That’s still no guarantee, but surely doesn’t hurt the case.
It’s a bit of a double edge sword though; as elites, we see both the community, and a behind-the-scenes look at Particle, so we’ve got a reasonable idea what’s going on in either. With that in mind, we personally filter out things we may or may not push for, a great example being this very request. Sure, it would be awesome to have new feature X for a select audience that would make use of it, but I wouldn’t prioritize it over stability/reliability improvements that would benefit literally everyone. At that point we accept that other items have priority, and keep that feature request on the back-burner, to be discussed again as soon as resources allow, rather than continuously annoy them with it.

Hope that makes sense and provides some insight. TL;RD: Discourse for discussing, GitHub is more ‘official’ I suppose.

[jimbol]

Thanks @Moors7,
Good info.

Undoubtedly this isn’t as high a priority as the stability items, and getting functional parity for the mesh devices with the Gen2 ones, and and I wouldn’t buck for it being that. But I certainly think that having a Local.publish would greatly increase the utility of Particle devices, and also that of the Mesh devices specifically, by enabling an extension of the mesh over greater distances within a facility, or communication between two separate mesh networks. More utility translating to greater adoption, I’d expect, and a leg up in functionality compared to the competition.

I have no idea how much is involved in satisfying a request like this, but I’d think that it would be closely related to the Particle.publish and Mesh.publish. I don’t mind how it comes to the attention of the powers that be, but would very much like to have this feature considered and hopefully at some point added into the features.

[karlg100]

I’m bumping this topic, now the Mesh is officially a dead product. I’m using mesh.publish() on a number of implementations, and a local.publish() with similar functionality would be huge.

[karlg100]

GitHub issue/feature request created - https://github.com/particle-iot/device-os/issues/2013

[Mjones]

Any chance of Particle taking another look at this now that mesh is gone?

[karlg100]

If someone feels modivated - a shim library to catch Mesh.* functions could be developed to either use MQTT or the built in multicast.