I am gonna make a Photovoltaic (PV) system power production monitoring tool. I did a little research and I ended up to Particle Boron or Particle Electron. While I was sure that Boron is perfect for the job, I found that Boron as newer device have some incompatibilities with some libraries, and that is why I am thinking about Electron. I also found that Particle stopped Mesh support. My question is if the end of Mesh will make the Boron works with all libraries that work on Electron - 2nd gen devices? Also which device of the two do you suggest me?
P.S. I am new in the IOT world, but as a computer engineering student I have experience with programming.
@ppprc, welcome to the Community! In order to best help you, can you explain which libraries you are trying to use that have “incompatibilities”? Though Mesh is now deprecated, except for hardware (STM32 vs nRF52840) dependent libraries (eg. SparkIntervalTimer), most libraries should work on both the Electron and the Boron with minor or no modifications.
First thanks for the quick reply.
I don’t have either Boron or Electron. I just did some research and found some people complaints about some errors they had when they tried to update from Electron to Boron or from Photon to Boron.
I have not decided yet which sensors I am gonna use but I know that I will take temperature, Irradiance, voltage, and current measurements.
For now I want to make the best choice on the micro controller and then I will move forward and find the sensors.
@ppprc, I am not aware of any “show stopper” issues going from Electron to Boron but again, it depends on the libraries beings used. As for going from Photon to Boron, one uses WiFi while the other is Cellular so there will be key differences that need to be considered.
From the sounds of it, most of your sensors will be I2C, SPI or Serial type sensors. One big difference between the Gen2 (Electron, Photon) and the Boron is that the Boron GPIO pins are NOT 5v tolerant like the Gen2 devices. This is not a problem if you consider this as a constraint in your design which, in this case, is straight forward to work with.
You choice of micro-controller should consider the complexity of managing your fleet of devices, if you are producing a product, as well as, the ease of rapid development and getting your product completed. Particle, unlike many other solution providers, addresses these needs quite well. If you can describe more on what you are trying to build, we can provide more in-depth advice.