Identify firmware to App

Developer Tools
1

It would be neat if there was a simple way to identify my firmware to the App / cloud.

Some kind of call in the code, like :

Particle.Identify("Weather V1.1");

Then in the app it would show :

Photon             Online, Weather V1.1
2

It could be me, but isnā€™t that kinda what the ā€˜nameā€™ is for, like, for naming things? That way youā€™d get ā€œWeather V1.1 onlineā€, which makes more sense, since the device is online, and not the firmware.

You could also set up a Spark.variable() with that information. Then itā€™s exposed to the cloud. The app is mostly meant for configuration and prototyping. I canā€™t imagine someone wanting to use that in production?

For product creators, thereā€™s this:
https://docs.particle.io/guide/how-to-build-a-product/dashboard/#your-product-id

3

I agree that having an opaque tag that the application can set at either compile time or runtime, and have that be reported to the cloud at init time, and displayed int eh IDE/Dashboard would be goodness.

I disagree that the device defines the application. I think that may be true after deployment, but during development or experimentation the coupling is transient.

1 Like
4

I noticed that when Tinker is loaded on a Photon and BluzDK, the name ā€œTinkerā€ shows up in the device list of the Particle app for phones/tables.
How does that work? I donā€™t see any code in the Tinker sketch itself.
I would like to use this to remember what I am running on my devices.

Some posts mention flags like APP=myapp for a command line compile, but I use the ParticleDev editor.

Thanks,
Pescatore

5

Iā€™d think that the presence of the four distinct particle functions used in Tinker is taken as indicator whether Tinker (or any code featuring the same four functions) is running on the device.

1 Like
6

Thanks ScruffR.
I wish it were user programmable.
I now have a mix of Photons, BluzDKs and GWS all with cute names that meant something to me at some point. I would like to be able to glance at the list to be sure which device I want to deal with.
I guess I need to pick better names.