Future of Mesh (Device OS 1.6.0 and beyond)

[cyclin_al]

Hello Everyone,

Particle has announced that Device OS 1.6.0 will be the last version to support Particle Mesh.
It seems that a small few of us protested strongly against the loss of Mesh.
For us few, what do we want to get out of Mesh?
There are really two parts to this question; what would we like Particle to provide in Device OS 1.6.0 and what would we as a community like to achieve beyond that with Mesh?

For example, I have suggested to set Mesh free, which means roughly the same as what @ScruffR has said:

@ScruffR

The only hope I’d have for mesh in 1.6.0 would be to lift all restrictions about multiple Argons/Borons as part of the mesh without them having to give up their cloud connectivity.

If it is possible to make Mesh network management de-coupled from the ParticleCloud, then possibilities open up for the future of Mesh. This goes beyond DeviceOS itelf and includes CLI, the setup apps, etc.

I am thinking of the same concept as for the RedbearDuo device. The RedbearDuo used a Particle P1 (or was it the P0?) and created a third-party board and OS similar to the Photon that added BT functionality. It still had limited ParticleCloud functionality (it lost mainly the OS update capability if I recall).

In the same way, Mesh could continue using our own third-party OS with limited ParticleCloud functionality. In this case, we could still use the Particle hardware as-is, since the hardware for Mesh is already there. Here is what I think we could reasonably achieve. All the tools would have to be updated to make the ParticleCloud un-aware of the Mesh functionality (alternate versions of CLI, the setup apps, etc.).

Argon with alternate OS:

• maintain Particle Publish, Subscribe, Variable & Function
• maintain flash application firmware OTA
• lose OS update functions via Particle
• Particle Cloud is unaware of all Mesh functionality (but Mesh Publish & Subscribe still work)

Boron with alternate OS:

• maintain Particle Publish, Subscribe, Variable & Function
• maintain flash application firmware OTA
• lose OS update functions via Particle
• Particle Cloud is unaware of all Mesh functionality (but Mesh Publish & Subscribe still work)

Xenon (and similar devices as well) with alternate OS:

• lose Particle Publish, Subscribe, Variable & Function
• lose flash application firmware OTA
• lose OS update functions via Particle
• Particle Cloud is unaware of all Mesh functionality (but Mesh Publish & Subscribe still work)

[kubark42]

I would love to have HA mesh be freed in order to implement @ScruffR’s proposal. How do we go about effectively advocating for this to happen? Since 1.5 is about to go out the door which means 1.6 dev starts in the coming days (if it hasn’t already), locking this in to the feature list before deprecation is sort of a now-or-never affair.

[kenmacd]

Personally if it’s possible I’d like to see the mesh stuff split out to a separate library.

To me once you get rid of the Particle backend support using mesh shouldn’t really be any different than using bluetooth or even a servo. We should be able to hook Xenons with Adafruit nRF52 boards with Nordic boards.

I’d rather run Argon & Boron’s with the standard OS but a library to let them talk to Mesh. Then they could be programmed to publish anything interesting to Particle.

[Darmitage]

Has anyone inside or outside of Particle reviewed Wirepas?

[JumpMaster]

Flashy website with no content. Not a good sign. It looks like I have to subscribe to their newsletter to see the technical PDF?

[armor]

What do you mean by outside of Particle? Particle Users who have looked at other mesh products?

In my case yes - I am a Particle User and on the Gen 3 Customer Council. I have looked at Wirepas and I have listened to them present their Mesh Network solution. It is or was when I spoken to them good but expensive and there is then the question of migration from the Particle environment/sunk cost. As to whether Particle product management have looked at Wirepas I can’t answer but if they have then I guess the conclusion might have been Wirepas has been focused only on Mesh and has been at it for 20 years with several proprietary technologies so to get close would require considerable investment and doesn’t sit with Particle’s Open Source approach.