We are the (hardware) engineers behind the Photon; Ask us Anything!

The best part was trying to make it as small as the Core, having initial difficulty in doing that, and then actually making it happen... while at the same time pleasing all of the artistic types at Particle! This was a challenge, and we love a good challenge.

fleas would have been better

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The question you have all been waiting forā€¦ this is for each of the 3 of you.

Shia LeBeouf is hunting each of you like animals in the woods. He is faster than you, stronger than you, and in his native habitat. You all are smarter than him though. How do you escape Shia LeBeouf individually and as a team???

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LOL, but fleas may not last as long.

@Jack, VBAT is not controlled by software.

VBAT will likely never be controllable by software, since it's just a voltage supply input. However, there will likely be some software commands and attributes you can apply to variables to force those variables to be stored in backup SRAM... which is used with VBAT supplying power to the STM32 inside the PƘ module. It's clear that this is hard area to navigate, and we definitely work out a tutorial on this to make it easy.

Lately I had some stability issues with the connection. The Core after some times goes back to green blinking, then come back to the cloud again.
I donā€™t know if my connection is poor, or my WIFI is weak, it is certainly a mix of both.
Anyway, did you noticed significant improvement in the connection stability with the Photon?

What reactions did you get at Maker Faire in regards to the Photon, and which did you like best?

Just a thought then. If you could have a switch that turns off the 3v3,( and a supply is on VBAT), that would save lots of battery. But then how would you turn 3v3 back on ?

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I show him the new Photon packaging. While he spends an hour appreciating it, I make a run.

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I give @mohit the new Photon packaging under the premise that he should show it to Shia to distract him. While he spends an hour admiring it, Shia LeBeouf spends that same hour gobbling him up and I escape quickly into the wilderness.

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I have to askā€¦

The Photon is running FreeRTOS. But currently the User code/System stuff is still running under 1 thread. When will the user/system code be decoupled and running on its own threads.

Individually, I would snap my fingers to summon an army of Maddie Ziegler androids... this would confuse and distract Shia LeBeouf long enough for me to simply walk away.

As a team, I would ask Mohit to program a Photon to Publish a message brett-needs-help that would be consumed by a Photon on Will's desk, which would blink the RGB LED rapidly in very irritating patterns which would enrage Will and he would drive "like mad" to wherever I was... and snap his fingers... unleashing the army of Maddie Ziegler androids.

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How long did you guys spend on getting an awesome answer to the Shia dilemma :p?

I am not from California, so I have to ask, what time does HAPPY hour start over there? LOL

@Carsten4207, remember that these guys are the HARDWARE engineers are a really not smart enough to do software :stuck_out_tongue: However, my understanding is that @mdma is working on a multi-thread firmware in this or the next sprint.

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Given the frequency with which this question is asked, I'm surprised they did not prepare ahead of time.

They are working hard to answer the other questions too though! I can hear the typing.

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Too long! haha.

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You're just jealous because @BDub got hired :wink:

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OH, HARDWARE engineers. The thread title forgot to mention HARDWAREā€¦