Just registered it’s my first post.
I just got a photon maker kit for christmas (nice gift ) , but i’m a bit at lost as to what i need to learn on the electronic side of things.I’m a software developer so this part doesn’t scare me much but i’ve never done electronics ( built an IR lock in high school ). I’d like to know where to begin on this side.
In all honesty i have no clue what half of the things inside the kit are for ( well google helped on that point ) or how/when they need to be used.( resistors ,etc. )
Any good ressource for this ? how much should i learn to make a good use of my kit ?
I also have a second question regarding the Particle in itself. I saw the cloud thing for update,the web IDE, etc.
And i would very much like to avoid using the particle cloud / web ide and hack into the device directly.
Are there any guide to go in that direction ? Because the official documentation only provide steps on how to work with the phone app/ web ide and although the phone app might be useful in the beginning to learn the electronic side i would very much like to remove the whole " my data => particle server => my device " as i don’t really like my data transiting through other people’s server / it’s adding an extra layer both ways (data => device / device => server) that i don’t really need as i would just like to interact with my own server only.
Hope those question haven’t been asked to often already couldn’t really find anything fitting my research.
Re: the first part of your post, how about possibly a book like this? (Note: I haven’t used this particular book, but have liked other offerings in the Make: series). It looks like it could be helpful to get started.
Another possibility might be to try looking into the SparkFun and/or Adafruit tutorials on beginning electronics.
But you can use Particles firmware either with their local cloud that only runs on your own server (search the forum for local cloud) or just via TCP/UDP.
Thanks for the help the book seems to be what i need it’s great. Am i right to believe that once the code is uploaded onto the device i will be able to communicate without the code going through particle servers ?
I would like to make a web api and have the device send " states " as json data. Would something like that work ? ( or a similar approach , tbh i haven’t really looked into the coding as well yet since i’m worthless in electronics )
What do you mean by that?
Once the firmware is running on your device there is no (program)code going anywhere.
It's just encrypted REST requests between the device and the (local or remote) cloud, but if you want to do it all "by hand" TCPServer/TCPClient and UDP are out-the-box libraries for you to use.
I meant through http but actually i just found this lib which will be perfect for what i’m thinking https://github.com/nmattisson/HttpClient , i was abit afraid the i would always have to do as shown in the example :
<**form action="https://api.particle.io/v1/devices/your-device-ID-goes-here/led?access_token=your-access-token-goes-here" method="POST">**
> Tell your device what to do!<br>
> <br>
> <input type="radio" name="args" value="on">Turn the LED on.
> <br>
> <input type="radio" name="args" value="off">Turn the LED off.
> <br>
> <br>
> <input type="submit" value="Do it!">
> </form>
) , but i’m a bit at lost as to what i need to learn on the electronic side of things.I’m a software developer so this part doesn’t scare me much but i’ve never done electronics ( built an IR lock in high school ). I’d like to know where to begin on this side.