Personal dissapointment

Connectivity BLE // NFC
1

Hi. A little rant from me. Ordered some Particle Mesh devices nearly year ago since i discovered them as being “cool and easy to program”. My programming skills are slightly over beginner, and i was hoping, these will be fun for me. Now i received them… I cannot create a mesh between Argon and Boron, there is no usable samples apart from blink or web blink. Got excited when seen Blynk library in web IDE, familiar with that. Guess what! Not supporting any of my devices! So now sitting with my three blinking leds and thinking, what to do with them?

Oh by the way, desktop IDE is not working for me, getting errors when selecting devices. Error suggests me to upgrade Atom, Atom says no update available.

So sorry if i am not right with my opinion, devices looking great and professionally made, but for my knowledge level absolutely useless at the moment.

2

Those are the magic words. Agreed, the experience isn't what is should be quite yet. Then again, the devices have only just been released (pre-orders are still shipping), so there's been little to no time at all to improve on them (based on user feedback), since that's only starting to roll in since the past few weeks.

In regards to examples, have you checked out Hackster, or any of the tutorials on the forums? These will most likely not be mesh-specific for reasons mentioned above, but could prove useful nonetheless.

As far as libraries go; most libraries are community contributions, not maintained by Particle, so support for next-gen hardware might not be there quite yet. In due time, these will most likely all get updated for those that need it.

For the IDE, currently, only the Web IDE and CLI are supported AFAIK, though support for Particle Workbench should be following soon (the successor of Particle Dev).

If you want immediate programming/hacking joys, I'd recommend getting a Photon. They've been out there way longer, and have had a good chance to stabilize. Tools and libraries should all be compatible as well. Everything you learn with them should be applicable to the Mesh devices too.

2 Likes
3

All i wanted, Boron inside my car, one Argon at home, press button on Boron, lights switched on on Argon. Another Argon opening gates at work, when i press another button on Boron. As i am at the bottom of programming skills, Blynk would be perfect solution, but… not available.

4

You can accomplish everything you just stated with the hardware you have. You don’t need blynk and you don’t need a Mesh network.

On the Boron, you do something like:

if ([button] == high) {
  Particle.publish("OpenGate",null,PRIVATE);
}

On the Argon, you do something like:

setup() {
  Particle.subscribe("OpenGate", OpenGate);
}

void OpenGate(const char *name, const char *data) {
  //Code here to open the gate.
}

If you want to describe your project more and list some parts that you may have, we can help.

3 Likes
5

I mean yes they aren’t working at the moment and eventually will come, but making argons work as repeaters does not seem like a priority at all right now. So right now having a bunch of argons and can’t do anything with them + feels like a waste of money at this point.

Like if you read https://blog.particle.io/2018/04/20/particle-mesh-102-selecting-a-role-for-your-device/ you start to think oh wow there is some versatility with the roles you can pick with these devices. It suggests that argons be used as gateways but it implies you can be creative and “pick” their roles where in reality it should’ve said argon = wifi gateway, boron = cellular gateway, xenon = repeater/endpoint. Nowhere is it mentioned that at release ONLY xenon can be repeaters.

6

Thank you for your offer. At the moment i am fitting RGB led strips on to my house. 15m in total. As my Particle order turned up, i was planning to make little enclosure with Boron, battery and few buttons, to turn RGB strips on white by approaching house. At work i have roller door. Just wanted to have one button to open and one to close that roller door…

7

That should be doable with the current MVP state of the devices you got.
If you have specific needs, we may be ablet to help.

@ninjatill has already provided on piece to the puzzle.

3 Likes
8

particle

Part of my yesterdays problem. It is much better now, rant over.