Particle.io in Canada?

Hey Phil!
the other week I looked into a Particle device sending a Telegram message to your devices (phone, whatever) via a Telegram bot. I documented it here.

Now I wonder two things:

  • can this mechanism be used to send a picture as well?
  • does it sound interesting to you so it's worth pursuing?

Gustavo.

Correct, you need one that can do TTL (UART?) through the RX and TX pins, Raspberry cam’s won’t work.

PHP script for the server is super simple: (ref: https://stackoverflow.com/a/26679604)

$uploaddir = '/usr/share/nginx/html/';
$upload_filename = date('Y-m-d_H-i-s') . '.jpg';
$uploadfile = $uploaddir . $upload_filename;

if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['picture']['tmp_name'], $uploadfile)){
  http_response_code(202);
  echo "OK.\n";
}else{
  http_response_code(406);
  echo "NOK!\n";
}

for the Firmware, you can refer to: Electron with serial jpeg camera sending partial images to the server

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I’m in Calgary, using Borons located in Victoria, Edmonton and Phoenix to monitor temperatures, humidity and battery voltages. Two Borons with GPS modules to track movement of vehicles.
I also have Argons (and a Xenon) near Calgary and in southern Manitoba monitoring temperatures and humidity.

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Grant - very cool!

Iv4n – thanks!! I’ve got all the parts now and I’ll try to hook it up on the weekend. So much fun so little time.

Iv4n,

I’ve looked at the post for the ‘Electron with serial’ a couple of times and the post sorta ends with there being an error. Is there a complete set of code that you could kindly point me to - one that worked for you?

The .php stuff is easy pour moi (I’m a web developer) but the serial port stuff not so much; I’ll apologize for my ignorance of the C language well ahead!

Thanks for the inspiration,
philly

Hey @phillycheeseman
I’m in Calgary :grin: I have couple Photos which I use basically for temperature and humidity control at home. One of them talk directly with Siri shortcuts to open garage turn on/off lights etc. One of my photon is also used for FFT spectrum monitoring it’s pretty fast as instead of obtaining data from serial I used Particle server lib to sending data over http and parse raw with python on other side I would love to use it somewhere on the floor for bearings monitoring but my company policy and my bosses are old school unfortunately :disappointed: I also have 1 Boron with GPS module but all of this funky stuff never left my basement :disappointed: I’m alone and don’t have any skills to go “outside” advertise them and jump from hobby to real world use case products.
Best regards, Arek

dreamER,

I too felt alone in the wilderness and couldn’t understand a way to turn this fascinating stuff into a product I could sell. The ‘particle community’ and time have shown me some light forward. I’ve focused on creating specific use case designs that people care about - can you imagine, most people don’t care about data…?

The ‘products’ I am working on do often exist already and are available but expensive. Hobo Data Loggers do a fantastic job - but I want to create a bit more so I’m building it myself.

But I think your comment is common and spot on - we have great tools available with Particle.io (or any microcontroller really) but there is a gulf between idea and product. I wish there was a Particle Store - not just a web site to buy the devices - a place to share products made by these devices. And to have a kind of go fund me for designs. This is a hallmark of the 3D printer world where designs are shared and sold as a way to sell printers (prusaprinters.org or thingiverse.com).

At any rate if I can help - not that I’m an expert - please ask. You are not as alone as you think you are!

cheers,
philly

2 Likes

Hey, in Ottawa as well. Mostly hobby stuff, just to play around here and there. Found the platform years ago now, thought it was very cool. Fun fact, there is company out of Waterloo, or that area, called Alert Labs. Not sure about all their other products but their claim to fame, the Flowie product, was one of the original cellular connected Particle devices. I took one apart once to see what was inside cause I had a feeling and sure enough! :slight_smile:

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@doubleopinter, cool! Good to see other Ottawa folks. I wonder if Alert Labs still uses Particle products.