I need a wired Ethernet solution, and would be willing to pay good money for a solution (up to $100 if need be)
I wouldn’t mind if the Ethernet solution was a shield or a separate device.
I really like the Particle.io platform for managing, flashing, and communicating with my devices. Congratulations, because you guys nailed it. This is something I (and my company) have needed for a long time.
The product I’m creating runs next to large machinery that can interfere with wifi signals. I also find that some corporate wifi setups are blocking all TCP ports above a specific number. Is there any way to change the outbound port the Photon uses?
If you are never going to create an Ethernet solution, would you be open to allowing third party devices (Arduino) to use your platform for managing and communicating (flashing would be beyond what I would expect)?
Any reason you can’t use a cheap wifi router VERY close to the product ??? - specifically for this device ??.
We use this technique with our own router for use within a ‘property’. Means we have full control (up the the ethernet of the wifi firewall etc. AND we can pre-configure the router even before installation…
@GrahamS This won’t work for us because almost all of of the corporate networks we encounter forbid people from installing wifi routers on them. This is for good reason, they don’t want just anyone broadcasting an open connection to their network that they can’t manage. Imagine if we didn’t enable security or enabled poor security such as WEP. Even if we did enable good security, they wouldn’t have control over who we allowed access to their network.
What about a Photon HDR (high data rate)
A Photon where it is colored gold but is otherwise identical to existing Photons but it is marked as HDR at the factory. So will allow the fastest data rates without throttling. Like per second readings.
Obviously it would cost more to account for the extra load on the cloud.
I second this. It is critical to incorporating this (an ethernet port) into systems that are part of a private network of devices that the Particle will provide IOT functionality.
+1 for an ethernet version of the Photon. I’m currently using multiple photons for my E1.31 based Christmas Light show and the unreliability of WiFi is really starting to bother me. An Ethernet version would solve all my problems!
I second quite a few things here. What I’d particularly love to see:
An Ethernet (possibly with PoE) version / adapter / whatever
An easy to setup local toolchain so nice code-completion and everything is possible. At some point this uploading get’s old.
Nice-to-have: Bluetooth Smart & HomeKit
The higher level themes behind these suggestions are mostly in automation and enabling ultra-low-latency interaction whenever being close. Essentially I want a short-cut direct communication if I’m in the same (W)LAN or connected via Bluetooth. E.g. after initial connection the mobile SDK could short-circuit via Bluetooth smart!
Personally I always hope that I get it running with the cross-compilation Rust-toolchain. Would give a lot of safety and developer comfort. But that’s of course a bit niche, so improving the plugins packaged with Particle IDE would probably suffice; essentially just the header-files are missing for nice completion experience.
Mesh, nice, yes but too many patents in this space. Take a look at e.g. Sipco (NPE): 7,103,511; 6,437,692 and 7,468,661. They are quite active pursuing their IP but their patents are about to expire (yay!). Until then, better avoid the “sensor --> mesh --> internet” configuration for commercial purposes unless their license makes sense to you.
There are so many areas Particle can/should go into, hard to say what ought to be the very next one. First of, I agree with ScruffR (and others) to do a bit of clean up before the next wave of new stuff. It is entirely possible you just run too fast and your developer community will eventually run into problems if not enough folks can understand the environment. Though I have programmed many different systems/environments, I am a newbie with Particle and must say that the onboarding process was (is?) messy and frustrating, however nice the web site and documentation looks at first glance.
But for new technology I am thinking this:
Edge analytics. It is all nice and well to hook up a temperature sensor and create remote trends, many real world applications involve more complicated sensors/sensing devices. Sending raw data across the cloud for remote processing isn’t smart in many ways. Best to do some level of preprosessing to get raw data into extracted feature vectors. That in turn requires some, math, neural networks, classifiers, dsp functions etc. Therefore, i would love to see Particle support a standard DSP lib or perhaps a downloadable lib that computes fast and efficient and is available to us all. If one does need to transfer a bit of raw data, a compression library that is quick and can load balance CPU power radio power (for battery applications) would be great to add to this library.
Commercial/industrial networks. Not sure exactly where your industry roadmap goes but supporting existing network interfaces in your target industries should be on your list. For me, home automation networks such as zigbee and zwave are important (hardware, and some emerging protocol stacks). But I play in industrial networks also so therefore OPC and MODBUS support would be great.
Sensor network management. Some means of managing large groups of sensors quickly and easily. E.g., be able to ‘tag’ sensors with a human readable identifier and update the firmware on all sensors with a particular tag name. Or get bulk data from all sensors with tag name etc. Your typical large scale network management stuff.
Top notch security. I am no security expert so perhaps I stick my foot in my mouth here. For industrial but also commercial applications, security ought to be the number 1 concern. How hackable is the current method Particle deploys? Can it be improved? Can it be tested against industrial standards? I am always worrying about this, not a day goes by and someone has hacked into yet another platform.
Perhaps I come up with more stuff once the cobwebs are cleared out
Hi,
would you consider an external module for ethernet, like this one perhaps?
I've seen few people wired it to an arduino via the SPI port, maybe it could work for your situation.
I've never used it myself, though.
Gustavo.
The Manual modes works well. I’ve written code to check the web only when I want to and also to never do so relying on the buttons to force it into a state I can re-program when Wifi is available.
Software: Would like to use Particle as an Access Point. Have my phone connect to it. AP working when setting up device, why not make it available in general?
Hardware: much more RAM. And a second Core which (optimally) we can turn on/off when needed. Second cores draw more power which isn’t good for battery life, but they are sexy for computation.
Programming Languages: C is an industry standard. You can’t get away from it. Learn it and you can do many many things. -1 to all other languages, even Java which I’m a fan of.
of the wifi firewall etc. AND we can pre-configure the router even before installation…
But i love to see support for I2S so i can hook my SGTL5000 chip to the Photon’s i have 
will allow the fastest data rates without throttling. Like per second readings.