Production module vs development board?

Hi, what are some downsides when using a development board on a product, vs using a production module?
For instance, there is no 3rd gen production module with wifi/ble (we have just the Argon, which is a dev board).
The reason I'm asking is that I read this post below and it triggered my curiosity.

Thank you!
Gustavo.

Not sure which production module you are referring to. Th A-SoM was originally planned but has been put on the back burner and has nor been confirmed to arrive anytime soon.

That’s also what Rick said in his reply to the original post.

Some advantages of a SoM would be the smaller form factor and a cheaper price due to some components not being on the SoM (e.g. power and charging circuitry, buttons, LEDs, …).

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The production devices are generally supported for a longer period of time. For example, the Electron may be phased out sooner than the E Series.

However in the case of the Argon, there is also the issue that there is no mobile device setup SDK for the Argon, which would make it very difficult to use in fleet situations since it would be hard to configure Wi-Fi. Also the Argon does not support WPA2 Enterprise.

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@gusgonnet
Based upon my experience with Photon vs. P1 - 1- 1000 devices - you can call this ramp-up in production terms:
Pros - micro USB / LED / reset buttons / easy to swap out device with DIP pins, can support WPA Ent
Cons - cost (but actually not that much difference), size, can’t support Ethernet

I agree if that’s your point about no A-SoM in the pipeline although I would rather wait to see what a possible Gen4 brings as the nRF58240 the Argon uses is really underpowered and not necessary given the demise of Mesh also lacking WPA Ent support but can support Ethernet. In other aspects the battery PMIC and connector plus the other stuff on the module make it attractive because likely you would need to provide this.

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please tell me everything you know, Will! :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Thank you all for the inputs, Andreas, Rick, Will.
Gustavo.

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Gustavo - I know as much as you. Every time I meet a Particle account executive I make a plea for a WiFi device with more flash, more RAM and more MHz - apparently other customers ask for these things. I am just hoping the messages will get through to the product strategy committee! :pray:

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