Good morning everyone. I have a question regarding post-project connectivity, that is, after completing my project and selling it to my customers, the same due to log in to the particle cloud in order to use the product. An example would be to build 1000 sensors for temperature reading over the internet using the particle photon. After assembling the project I would have to provide the information as ID of each card so that my customers can log into the cloud and use the product. Is there another alternative?
That’s not typically how products are used. The product creator typically retains control over all of the devices in their product.
For the Photon and P1, since Wi-Fi credentials are required you normally create a mobile app that allows the Wi-Fi credentials to be set and to also add the device to your product using a customer account. There are two kinds of customer accounts, a simple auth account where Particle handles the authentication, and two-legged auth where you maintain the identities of your customers. In neither case can these logins access the features like the console or Web IDE. They are only for managing access to the device from your mobile app.
For cellular devices, it’s more common for the product creator to manage everything using their own server. All devices can be claimed to a single account, a per-customer account, or no account, but you handle any authentication on your own servers.
That is the doubt. If I make the cards and provide ID and other information about the device, my customers will have access to everything. inclusive source code that is not viable. But in the simple authentication account it is possible for my client to configure only the wi-fi?
If you create customer accounts (simple auth or two-legged), those accounts cannot log into any Particle services, even if they have the Device ID. They cannot access source code or any product features. Those accounts can only communicate with the cloud for that specific device, allowing functions, variables, publish and subscribe so your mobile app can communicate with the device.
It’s also possible to set the Wi-Fi only and not claim the device to a customer account. This is done when the device is just capturing data and you don’t want the user to be able to do anything with it, not even get get published data off it or communicate in any way with it.
Do you have a tutorial on creating client accounts with authentication and Wi-Fi configuration by clients?
Normally you just let the Mobile SDK for iOS or Android handle setting up Wi-Fi and creating accounts for you.
If you want to know what’s happening behind the scenes when you do this, this tutorial shows how you can to it step-by-step manually.
Hi Marcelo,
If you were planning on a hybrid app (perhaps based on the Ionic Framework) you could use this ParticleJS SDK for managing all the cloud calls in your app.
Also, if you wanted to read more about authentication for your customers and such, you can find more info here.
This is on top of what Rick mentioned in his posts above.
Happy reading!
Gustavo.
1 Like
@uthacod If you are going to make and sell >1000 WiFi based Particle devices using the Photon then I would suggest the following:
- Get a Particle enterprise account
- Build a product
- Have one Particle account against which you register all the devices before you ship them
- Use SoftAP (for Photon) to allow an end user to setup the WiFi credentials - this uses a phone browser as the mechanism to select the WAP you want to connect to and to enter the WiFi credentials
- If you customers want the sensor data - build a web app that applies security to access to the data and use the Particle Cloud APIs to access the data your devices will be publishing.
Thanks. I will migrate to business account.
Have a discussion with Particle Sales first - the threshold is 5000 WiFi devices - may have changed but that was the figure a year ago. You can pilot up to 100 devices for free on a personal account/product. You haven’t said where you have got to in terms of development. Maybe talk to Particle Studio or watch some of the webinar/tutorials?
Hey Will, side question:
what does this mean, that over 5000 devices or so you must have an enterprise account?
Thanks
Hi Gus, the minimum threshold for an enterprise account with WiFi devices was 5000 units, at least that was the parameter used when I did a deal - that’s why I suggested a discussion with Particle Sales since this number may have changed.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 182 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.