3 ms·

> Few big players seem to be making use of such a thing. They'd currently rather have their own walled gardens. :) Even some of the small maker targeted ones.

> Few big players seem to be making use of such a thing. They'd currently rather have their own walled gardens. :) Even some of the small maker targeted ones. For awhile I was searching for a cheap wifi connected microcontroller for some hobbyist home automation stuff. Both the Electric Imp[1] and Particle/Spark[2] products looked great, but they seem to both have obligatory cloud integration. If I spend weeks building something for my home, It has to be able to work until the hardware dies. Luckily, I found the ESP8266[3] has pretty much all the capabilities I want, no cloud required. [1] https://electricimp.com/ https://electricimp.com/ [2] https://www.particle.io/ https://www.particle.io/ [3] http://www.esp8266.com/ http://www.esp8266.com/

simoncion 11y ago
My roommate got an Electric Imp from a meetup or something that the company sponsored. Oh, was it so disappointing. * Funky, confusing little form factor? Check! :D * Really cute way to get network credentials into the device? Check! :D * Only programmable in some Javascript variant? Check! :/ * Application server that lets you remotely change the code running on any activated device? Check! :D * Complete and utter absence of locally-hostable version of said application server? Check! :( They won't even give you the option of paying more for the hardware to get a copy of the application server. :/