So I know how to talk to my Particle devices with IFTTT, including using iOS widgets to just have a button that can trigger IFTTT to tell a Particle device to do something.
And I know Blynk exists and the basics of what it can do, though I haven’t done anything with it.
Is there anything else somewhat generic for talking to Particle devices without fully coding your own device app from scratch? Ie. any other app-builder frameworks that might be able to talk to Particle Cloud?
Reason I ask is I’d like something a tad “better” than the IFTTT widget solution because I’d like some feedback. That is to say I’d like to have an app that could not only send a command, but also listen for feedback and let me know if the command worked.
Yes, I know I could write an app from scratch, but I was sort of hoping there’s some easier way. Anything sort of like Blynk exist that just talks to the Particle Cloud and doesn’t require adding code to the devices themselves?
There are some (somewhat dated) tutorials in this forum that show how to use JS on a web page to interact with Particle.function(), Particle.variable() and Particle.subscribe() on the device.
e.g. Tutorial: Spark Variable and Function on One Web Page
While dated, the principle hasn’t changed a lot (replace Spark with Particle and consult the docs for new syntax - e.g. Particle.variable()).
I’ve used Thunkable for several apps. You can only have one app to test on your phone at a time, unless you publish the app on one of the app stores (Apple/Google). The apps work very well and you’re really developing in a GUI environment dragging components around for the UI as well as the “code”. There’s some discussion on this board about Thunkable and I’d suggest you do a bit of searching to see if it’s of interest.
I’ve made a generic app with multiple pages for operating my devices at home and it has proven to work very well.
Thanks, guys. Something like Thunkable is what I’m after. I can absolutely do this using the Particle app, I just want something a little simpler and easier, and ideally would like to be able to do iOS app widgets, too. But that’s less necessary than just being able to have some big buttons and some obvious feedback versus the Particle app where there’s a few touches to navigate to the right place, then you have to send a “1” or an “on” or whatever and then go look at a variable to see the state, etc. The Particle app is WONDERFUL for debugging and even just plain useful for occasionally poking at something, but this is something I’d use daily and I just want something a little easier.
I realize this is bit late for this thread, but I wanted to update everyone on Thunkable’s new Drag and Drop development interface. It’s far superior IMHO to the previous interface. I was able to completely re-write my app for controlling home devices in a few hours. It’s a very simple iOS app (should also work on Android) and I’ve tagged it as “Public” so you should be able to find it and copy it to your own Thunkable account if you’re interested. The name of my app is “Home Control” and as I said, it’s very basic, but allows me to call different functions on different Particle devices and could be a decent starting point for far more sophisticated apps if you need something more “sophisticated”.
In any case, I’m just trying to throw it out there for those who wish they had an easy way to build a native iOS and Android (and web) app. Any constructive feedback will be welcomed!
I truly believe this could be a game changer for many of us.
