@Will Do you guys know what the additional charge beyond baseline device Cloud pricing for Argon & Boron will be?
Assuming I use up the 10 Free Gateway upgrades what can I expect cost wise to operate mesh networks after the free gateways are used up?
Just trying to get clear on what the cost will be to setup different mesh applications and it's not very clear to me based on what I have read in the FAQ below.
Thanks!
Do I have to pay anything to use Particle Mesh hardware?
Particle Mesh pricing builds on existing Wi-Fi and cellular Device Cloud pricing. All Particle customers get 10 free gateway upgrades to support prototyping and evaluation of Particle Mesh. After the first 10 upgrades, Particle will charge an additional monthly fee beyond baseline Device Cloud pricing for Argon and Boron devices acting as gateways within a Particle Mesh network. Adding mesh-only devices (Xenons) to your network and all local communications between mesh devices are free.
With 10 free gateway upgrades you could build
One giant network of 100+ devices
Ten different networks of 10+ devices
Five different networks with redundant gateways (Ethernet + Cellular backup, for example)
Hey there @RWB – we're still working on pricing beyond the first ten gateways and would like to better understand customer deployment patterns before committing to enterprise pricing that may not work in the long term for ourselves or for our enterprise customers.
A few things we have decided:
We're going to charge for gateways that connect to the Particle cloud and support the mesh network, not for devices communicating locally within the mesh network.
There will be an additional charge to "upgrade" devices to become gateways for a Particle Mesh network which is additive on top of our existing Device Cloud pricing that governs standalone Wi-Fi and Cellular Particle endpoints.
We wanted to give developers plenty of room to build and prototype with Particle Mesh before hitting any kind of paid threshold. The text you cited in the FAQ is illustrative of the space we're trying to create for developers to evaluate the solution without incurring any kind of additional fees:
One giant network of 100+ devices
Ten different networks of 10+ devices
Five different networks with redundant gateways
What is the reason for the extra cost here other than to provide Particle with another income stream?
I mean with the Boron the more data used the higher the monthly data bill will be which is a profit center for Particle.
With Wifi the extra data communication "Assuming there is more internet data communication due to it being a Mesh network" is not much of a big deal compared to a normal Photon or multiple Photons doing the same thing.
Where is Particle expecting to see the extra operating cost on their end that when it comes to the new Mesh networks that justify charging end users more than the current Device Cloud Pricing that is currently active that makes sense.
Just thinking out loud here since product creators or our customers will have to cover these ongoing cost you put in place and they have to make sense if this is going to work for everybody.
In the context of a mesh network, I would argue that Wi-Fi and cellular gateways create additional value beyond a simple Wi-Fi or cellular endpoint (Photon/Electron) that is reasonable to charge for.
The simplest example is OTA passthrough. Gateway devices will enable product creators to target individual devices within a Mesh network and OTA firmware to them. OTA is one of the primary features of our “Device Cloud” service that we otherwise charge on a per-unit basis for standalone Wi-Fi and cellular devices which we’ve decided to charge only at the gateway level for mesh networks.
Additionally, we intend to add features to our gateways to do things like consolidate sensor data at the gateway level before passing to the Cloud and locally distribute batch OTA firmware updates (download once, distribute to many) that will actually reduce data consumption.
Considering the cost of an example deployment of 100 Wi-Fi or cellular endpoints to a product creator versus a single mesh network of 2-5 gateways and 100 Xenons, the total cost is very likely to be lower, not higher.
Hope that helps to explain our rationale a little better.
If I use an LTE Boron but not in a mesh network will the cost be the same as an electron as far as cellular data and cloud pricing, or will it incur an additional gateway fee?
Seeing the lower cost of the Boron hardware, I’ll likely migrate electron projects to it if the ongoing cost is the same.
If you are not running a mesh off of your Boron there won't be a gateway upgrade fee (which would only happen when running more than 10 gateways anyhow).
I would really like to request that Particle stays open to the idea of free, larger than 10 mesh networks for Developers and Educators. 30 Mesh devices at $10 per month ($120.00 per year) does not seem like much for a large business, but for a hobby Developer it might be an issue.
I think there are lots of Developers who would like to work with between 10 and 50 Mesh devices. I am are not talking about 24/7 running networks, more proof of concept, such as my farm suggestion at Ratio of mesh-only (Xenon) to internet-enabled boards (Argon, Boron). Test that the system works and then dismantle it and build something else.
Just saying that in my opinion the backbone of the Particle devices is the forum and the multitude of excellent Developers who spend hours of there time solving problems for others: such as @ScruffR, @peekay123, @bko, @Moors7, @nrobinson2000, @timx and many others. If these people want to work with more than 10 Mesh devices perhaps their should be a way to make that possible.
It is not just the number of networks, which kicks in at 10, but also the type of network.
Pricing kicks in right away for the HA networks. That could put a damper on development since a HA network is inherently more complex and will need more development time, integration and testing to ensure the project gets it right. For the hobby developer, just getting that much hardware to do a HA network is expensive. The fees on top of that will add up quickly.
All Particle customers will get 10 free gateway upgrades for prototyping and evaluating Particle Mesh. All local communications between mesh endpoints are free.
With 10 free gateways, you could build:
One giant network of 100+ devices Ten different networks of 10+ devices Five different networks with redundant gateways (Ethernet + Cellular backup, for example)
Which looks a bit more positive. Does anyone know how to link gateways together to make the giant network, in my case of 30 devices?
So I have my 1 Argon and 3 Xenons working at school. I load my simple blink program on a Xenon. The targeted Xenon device flashes pink properly and all the Xenon devices reset properly, but the code does not work.
I think it might be my Photon code so I load Blink-an-LED from particle. Try another Xenon and the same thing. This time I try the Argon and not only does it not blink but same as the above post, the mesh devices do not reconnect until the Argon is unplugged and plugged in.
Also the Argon D7 never blinked. Any idea what is happening here…anyone…
I might connect an Argon without the Mesh and see if it works with the blink program
I’ve not had a problem executing code and suspect something else is going on here.
I have had code lock up once during the 3 days I have owned these but I’ve been able to mostly run code fine.
How are you flashing?
I have had inexplicable router, mesh, and pairing issues which I’ve worked through (the router one being - just keep trying different routers until you find one that works).
But code execution, while not “production quality” 100% uptime, has been fine considering where particle is in this product release.
I just loaded up my trusty photon to check if the LED blink program actually worked and connected in seconds flashed and was blinking fine in about 9 seconds. So I guess I will try an Argon off-mesh and see if it works better.
Thanks @RWB, @cyclin_al and @jtmoderate876 for the replies, kind of feels like we are lone, unpaid, beta testers at the moment. Well actually we are a small group of unpaid beta testers.
Knowing the device works prompted me to look deeper. I tried an Argon off-Mesh and it still didn’t work but then looked at the firmware and noticed this
The default setup is not what was on my device. I think with the photon whenever that happened it would flash the new firmware, but I guess at the moment the Mesh devices don’t auto detect and update the firmware.
Anyway. Happy story my Argon works!
Next. Mesh.publish anyone got a simple program that allows each mesh device to brodcast some information that flashes D7 a distinct number of times. So as I watch my devices and add or subtract Xenons I can see if the Mesh knows they are there or gone.
I just noticed a little while ago that rc.26 was the default on the web IDE. One of my Xenons has rc.26, all the rest are on rc.25, but I can’t figure out how to get the others to the new version. I guess setting up a new Xenon gets the new firmware, but I just did that with a new Argon, but it installed rc.25. I can’t get Particle update to work on the mesh units, and if I flash using the Default, my firmware doesn’t update as @rocksetta notes.
Anyone have an idea on how to get rc.26 on our devices?
