How to provision Electron based product to endusers?

Now that I’m on my way to testing my Electron based Kiosk out in the wild [Well, my backyard anyway.] I’m going to be connecting it to the API of our Saas that we provide to our customers.

I’m trying to understand how I would roll these Kiosks out to the end users. What does that user experience look like? I’ve read this provisioning portion on how to build a product, but there is a lot of detail left out. Can anyone that’s done this at scale share how you are doing this?

Please tell me more about your kiosk project. I have been thinking about making a interactive retail product display / kiosk also.

Maybe Kiosk is being generous. It basically scans RFID tags for attendance. I’ve thought about adding an LCD screen, but nothing like an interactive multimedia touch screen thingy I’ve made back in the day when Macromind Director was the rage. Right now it flashes an LED, randomly plays a ditty and uploading the Tag ID to our server.

Thanks for the info. Sounds cool even without the LCD screen :smiley:

I asked about support for an Electron-based product a few weeks ago. Here are my questions and the Particles answers:

Q: How does the onboarding process for an electron work? How do I manage the inventory? I have built the process to allow “Two-Legged” authentication for a photon based product but do not understand how this would work for the Electron.

A: The setup process for a single Electron is done either through our web or mobile app. We are currently working through the process of how we plan to enable the capability of activating many SIMs at one time as well as managing authentication. There are a few variable that make cellular different that wifi and so are taking the time to think through all of the different possibilities. We hope to have a process published in the next 2 weeks.

Q: How would the data charge work for an Electron product?

A: we offer bulk pricing and bill the organization.

Q: Will you be selling the Electron without the full kit?

A: We will be selling the Electron in trays without the packaging. Pricing is being developed now and will be published soon.

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Thank you.

This seems promising.

My thought for the first phase (1-100 units) is just getting raw Electrons and dropping them into a custom PCBs and then configure before shipping out. But at some point I’ll need to just ship these out and have the end-user do the setup. I was thinking something like how consumer routers that you login to (via http) and enter credentials, etc. Hoping I can tie the ElectronID and CustomerID to each-other.

Were you able to create an Electron product?

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Sorry to take so long to getting back!

I’m embarrassed to say I have never seen the form you show. Mind sharing a link? I was going by more of a hypothetical after reading the docs, which I swear I’ve read at least three times, but must have missed how you initiate a build. I know I’m a long way out (2-3 months?) from actually doing this, and I just assumed they’d be offering Electrons as a build option (I should confirm this, huh?) I just wanted to understand before I went any further how this part of the delivery chain was actually implemented. I’m cool with greenfield stuff, most of everything I do is greenfield. That’s my happy place to be!

It’s part of the organization dashboard: https://docs.particle.io/guide/how-to-build-a-product/dashboard/#setting-up-an-organization

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Thank you.

I glossed over that part when I saw the $49/mo fee… Wasn’t that ready to launch.

Hopefully they’ll ask for feedback when they present their on-boarding solution.