SoftAP on Argon?

I just made a video asking @rickkas7 for a Web BLE based page that would allow us to easily pass data between the Gen3 Devices and the Web BLE webpage to accomplish the same features that SoftAP does on the Photon.

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OK. Thanks for the feedback. I’ll simply wait to see what develops w/r/t BLE setup guidance. It was just soooo easy to use SoftAP to configure WiFi, but I want to continue to move forward with the new devices.

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HI @RWB I need to star to deploy some Argon to customer without visiting to setup WiFi on Argon. When we can use SoftAp for Argon or similar way to setup an Argon with the customers WiFi without share my Particle account credentials ? Thanks

You cannot.
But BLE should be an option.

@ScruffR can you point me on the doc about BLE please ?

AFAICT the next release of the Particle app should break out the WiFi setup from the device claiming and mesh setup task as an individual feature.

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Actually, if I need to send some Argon to customers and provisioning into only one account without give Particle Cloud credentials, i need to wait the new release of the app ?

I’m doing some preliminary noodling for a new widget that I’d like to implement using the Particle ecosystem. Based on some quick referential investigation it appears that one of the core features I wanted to support (SoftAP) is not available for Gen3 devices?

Q: One might ask, why use SoftAP with all the other connectivity options for Gen3 devices??

A: I want to surface my widget collected data on a mobile device in an agnostic manner.

The intent behind the pursuit of an agnostic approach is many fold, but the primary motivation is the ability to interact with any browser-enabled device straight away. I don’t want to build mobile device apps, and I’d prefer to build and maintain the HTML interface at widget level (i.e. my Particle device), and have the ability to push future updates via the conventional manner when needed thru particle cloud.

Am I correct that the only way forward here without gyration and hoop jumping is using a P-Series platform???

All of the “provisional” purposing aside, why would this get deprecated for these types of applications???

I’ll be the first to admit I’m overlooking something fundamental…

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Hi @ScruffR , do you know if this has happened? Thanks!

Nope, I don’t unfortunately and I haven’t heard from back @jensck_particle (IIRC he’s driving the Android App development) either.

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Is there any update on this topic? Could really use this!!

No change so far, but you may want to vote this one up here

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voted!

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Hi,

we had this very nice way of using softapp with the P1.

It works good for our customers.

Now with everything (seemingly) out of stock, we are updating to the (twice as expensive) Argon.

But it has no Softapp.

  • Do we now need to develop 2 apps (ios and Android) … and list them in the app store to keep the product running?

  • I know the ESP32 on the Argon can do Softapp … can a good developer build this feature for us? Or is it impossible?

  • If that’s possible, I’d like to request to add Soft app into the Argon.

Thanks for any ideas.

Thanks

SoftAP on Argon is theoretically possible, however the ESP32 firmware installed on the device does not have server mode enabled, so you’d probably need to replace the ESP32 firmware with a custom fork in addition to the parts of user firmware to implement the protocol.

You could build a single mobile app that supports both Wi-Fi and BLE setup, that’s what the Particle mobile apps do. However, this will be complicated by the fact that there is no device setup for Argon library available, and the low-level BLE setup is not documented. The Argon was intended to be used as a developer device, not a white-label product device, so those things do not currently exist.

It’s unlikely that SoftAP would ever be implemented on the Argon by Particle as BLE is the preferred method of setting up an Argon and is what is already implemented in the Particle mobile apps.

Thanks.

Ok, what should be used as product device?

We don’t currently have a good solution, as the P1 becoming unavailable was not planned. Steps are being taken now, but there is nothing to announce yet.

@volker I don’t know at what scale you’re shipping out products, but I do this: Photon WiFi at customer site - successful provision, but never moves past flashing green - #21 by policenauts

If you’re working at scale this is obviously not realistic, but after having one too many WiFi connection failures during customer setup, I now send along one of these TP Link units with each Photon-based product I sell and pre-provision the Photon’s WiFi credentials to that TP Link unit (which obviously takes time). The customer then doesn’t even need to do any WiFi provisioning at their site, I instruct them to simply plug the TP Link into the back of their router and they’re immediately connected.

If you take the above approach, one thing you could do (which I’m now going to do, going forward) is you also modify the password of the TP Link unit to make them all consistent, so that if their TP Link access point fails, they can simply order another one, modify the settings and password themselves, and in theory the Particle WiFi product should then connect to the new one.

Hey everyone, just wanted to call attention to a potential solution for this problem that I just posted here

Hopefully it can help solve some of these issues for you and your customers.

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For future visitors:

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