How to get a production product onto customer’s WiFi?

[SeattleDavid]

We are looking at using the argon processor for a production product. But we can’t seem to work our way through how to get the finished product onto the customer’s Wi-Fi network.

This has to be done in a customer friendly way. A common approach taken by other products is to create a temporary access point and to prompt the customer to choose an SSID and to enter the password. (We don’t have a display and so cannot let the user do the input through a UI.)

Surely, this is a well tread path. Shirley there are application notes and a standard way of accomplishing this task. After all, if Particle products are to be in production products and if they are to communicate, they all face this exact same problem.

I’ve been looking, but it not been able to find an application note that walks me through how to do this.

What is the best practice for allowing an end customer to enter the SSID and password so that the Particle device can get on the web?

[potatotron]

This is how you do it with the Photon

How to setup WiFi SSID and password for photon in softAP mode using HTTP webpage?

Other than running SoftAP for wifi setup (if you included in your application), the Photon has no web page to show details. You can implement a web server in your app to do that if you wish.

[Moors7]

The argon handles setup over Bluetooth, so it has a continuous internet connection, and can even update the firmware on first connect.

[armor]

@SeattleDavid What sort of product do you have here. Is there a UI (screen and buttons) or is it headless? For headless setup the Argon has BLE and NFC (admittedly not type 4 - where you could read and write with a Smartphone App). BLE is therefore the way to go but this requires a Smartphone App to interact with the Argon. There isn’t a Particle template BLE enable mobile app to do WiFi setup unfortunately.

[glx]

I’m also missing an App that just connects the Argon to a WiFi in a simple way .
Since the official particle-app has that functionality it should be quite easy to just put that part in a new one that works without an account .

[cbrake]

I am working on a way to use web bluetooth to configure WiFi on Argon devices in the field. The advantage of web bluetooth is you don't have to publish a mobile app -- you can add the code to any web page and you simply browse to the web site to get the "app." Works great on Android and MacOS. The downside is that safari on iOS does not support web BT (last time I checked), so you have to purchase a special browser to get webBT:

‎WebBLE

I posted a little information in this thread with my current solution:

Argon showing up as unknown in particle app

thanks – that makes sense then. Is it possible to change the WiFI credentials using the mobile app for an argon device that is part of a product? Or, how is this typically done? Thanks!

Note, it still needs some polish (security, etc), but the basics work.

I don't consider the particle app a production solution as it does not seem to work once a device is part of a product, and using the barcode on the device is not very convenient if it is in an enclosure. I'm also not sure how your customers could use it (can they have separate accounts, etc). (correct me if I'm wrong about this).

What I need is mobile experience where you can scan for all devices locally, select one from a list, perhaps enter a password, and then be able to configure it, view diagnostic info, etc.