EEVblog #642 - TI Connected Launchpad

[EEVblog]

Dave checks out the $20 TI EK-TM4C1294XL Tiva C Series TM4C1294 Connected Launchpad Internet of Things.
ARM Cortex M4 processor with Ethernet and IoT demo application.
http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/launchpads-connected-ek-tm4c1294xl.html
How useful is it out of the box?

[Rasz]

Well, thats one boring jump on the bandwagon product

maybe relevant:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/173169/faq_ftc_blog_endorsement_rules.html

[Mikey]

When turning the leds on and off, how fast did it react?

I have tried both Electric Imp and Spark Core for my small IoT projects, and I ended  up using the Electric Imp for all my things. The Electric Imp both got code running on the device, and on their server, so if you want to pull data down from a API, or even extract something out of a big website, you can have the Agent running on their server do it, and only transfer the stuff you want to the device. Only thing I don't like about it is how sensitive it is to Error40's. If you connect something to it wrong, you have a very big chance of breaking it compared to an arduino. But reaction time from you access the url associated with your Electric Imp, until it responds, is very fast.

But back to the TI, did you measure how much current it draw while running?

[nixfu]

HAHA...anyone else notice it looks like about a dozen different oscilloscopes sitting on the shelves behind Dave all turned sideways?
Maybe hes saving up for a scope shootout.


Anyone have any ideas where this would be a better choice than a raspberrypi or arduino?

[EEVblog]

maybe relevant:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/173169/faq_ftc_blog_endorsement_rules.html

No, it's not, because:
a) I bought it.
b) I not a Yank, FTC rules mean squat.

[EEVblog]

Anyone have any ideas where this would be a better choice than a raspberrypi or arduino?

It's $20

[EEVblog]

When turning the leds on and off, how fast did it react?

Maybe just over a second.

[neotesla]

Just bought one for myself, looks interesting. Oh, for other Aussies (don't know about other countries), the postage is also free.

[free_electron]

My frustration with a lot of these ioT thingies is that they always rely on a third party service or server. Some of em charge money, that's a problem. Bigger problem is :what if that server goes down ? Or the host goes bankrupt. It's game over !

Why can't these devices simply serve by themselves ?

[EEVblog]

Why can't these devices simply serve by themselves ?

There are ones that do. This is obviously not one of them.
Although it's not the board itself of course, it's just the demo app that comes with it that uses the exosite service.
The server based ones can have advantages, and also disadvantages as you have pointed out.

[SeanB]

Having the device itself it probably would be relatively easy to change who it uses as a provider at least for the Dev boards. IOT yes you are going to have orphanware when the supplier goes bust or decides the servers are too expensive to maintain. If you can upload your own firmware direct to the device ( one reason to like either open source or at least the idea of having the firmware available and documented) then it is possible to roll your own server, which will make the devices a lot more secure as well. After all if it is on it's own network not connected to the wooly cloud it can be a lot more secure, though if it is WiFi I would have a totally separate network and a PC that acts as a gateway and is set up for paranoia.

[bingo600]

I did a blinky here . mostly to verify the Launchpad arm-gcc tc

http://forum.stellarisiti.com/topic/1888-ek-tm4c1294xl-the-first-blinky-with-gcc/

Template from here
https://github.com/uctools/tiva-template

/Bingo

[hikariuk]

COM would most likely be the Component Object Model.  It defines the binary format used by libraries and programs on Windows to marshall objects between each other (such as for IPC).

[Tek_TDS220]

Very timely video, I've got one on order.  I'm heavily invested in Microchip development tools, but for US$20 I've got to give it a try.  The documentation is excellent and the hardware seems well designed on first glance.

I was a little surprised to see the 0.1 amp current draw, but that was with several LED's on.  I was hoping to build a battery-powered data server.

Dave, you seem 'on edge' during this video.  Not a criticism, just hoping everything is OK with you.

[waspinator]

are these dev boards open hardware?

[zapta]

My frustration with a lot of these ioT thingies is that they always rely on a third party service or server. Some of em charge money, that's a problem. Bigger problem is :what if that server goes down ? Or the host goes bankrupt. It's game over !

Why can't these devices simply serve by themselves ?

The centralized cloud based control solves several problems such as incoming connection via NAT, aggregation values from multiple devices and locations, authentication, paper trail, and more.

The dependency on a small player is a real risk though and will deter series implementations.

Once solution would be using open protocols and server software so you can run yourself or pick from one of N service providers, with the ability to redirect your device when you move to a different service (e.g. by modifying your DNS records).  Another solution is to use closed cloud system from a large and stable vendor that is much less likely to close shop.

BTW, Dave, the dark background with the storage racks does not look good. The topic was excellent.

[motocoder]

I did a blinky here . mostly to verify the Launchpad arm-gcc tc

http://forum.stellarisiti.com/topic/1888-ek-tm4c1294xl-the-first-blinky-with-gcc/

Template from here
https://github.com/uctools/tiva-template

/Bingo

Thank you, this is very useful. I like the idea of a completely open source, unlimited compiler / toolchain.

[BravoV]

Anyone have any ideas where this would be a better choice than a raspberrypi or arduino?

Its different beast, not sure about rpi, but to arduino, its has an arduino fork called Energia -> (Energia link).

But when it comes to the processing power and features, the atmel mcu in arduino just not in the same league, and not even fair to compare them. 

A brief diagram on this mcu capabilities & features.

[JonnyBoats]

I have a couple of these boards and like them. I think there are a couple of points worth noting:

1) The price is excellent in my opinion - TI sells it for $20 US and ships for free virtually anywhere in the world. Where else can you get any sort of micro-controller with a built in Ethernet port for $20 delivered?

2) When evaluating this it is important to differentiate between the hardware and the free demo software that ships with it. The demo software is intended to be just that, not a ready for prime time application. Remember that TI provides multiple, free development tools and one is free to build their own applications and use whatever sort of host (including self hosting) that one likes. Also you are not limited to TI development tools, you can use GNU for example.

3) Compared to  Arduinos and Raspberry PIs which ship in the millions this is a relatively obscure platform; you should not expect to find a large community and lots of online support for this product. The ecosystem is very small compared to Arduinos and PIs.

[EEVblog]

are these dev boards open hardware?

Yes
http://upverter.com/measley/0d83e4f8eaaa6a7b/EK-TM4C1294XL-REV-D/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC 3.0 BY)

[EEVblog]

I was a little surprised to see the 0.1 amp current draw, but that was with several LED's on.  I was hoping to build a battery-powered data server.

Yes, so was I. Perhaps it's just running at full tilt, with no power optimisation?

Dave, you seem 'on edge' during this video.  Not a criticism, just hoping everything is OK with you.

Just the usual stuff that pisses me off. Bugs in the screen capture and product etc.

[EEVblog]

2) When evaluating this it is important to differentiate between the hardware and the free demo software that ships with it. The demo software is intended to be just that, not a ready for prime time application. Remember that TI provides multiple, free development tools and one is free to build their own applications and use whatever sort of host (including self hosting) that one likes. Also you are not limited to TI development tools, you can use GNU for example.

Yes, I should have emphasised that more. I agree that it's pretty unbeatable for the price/performance as a general purpose connected processor demo board.
You could even buy the boards as-is and use them economically in small-medium volume at that price.
But I suspect most are going to try the out of box demo and IoT to get it up and running, and I don't think it's too much to expect it to work flawlessly in that regard. But for a $20 demo board, any way you go 

[EEVblog]

Anyone have any ideas where this would be a better choice than a raspberrypi or arduino?

You can't even compare Raspberry Pi & Arduino, completely different classes of processing power.
It is fair to compare it with the Raspberry Pi though.
Depends what you want. If you want a HDMI output solution that is ready to go running Linux or whatever then the RPi wins. Pri also wins on the community support side of things.
But if you want the most bang-per-processing-buck, the Launchpad would be hard to beat.

[Monkeh]

are these dev boards open hardware?

Yes
http://upverter.com/measley/0d83e4f8eaaa6a7b/EK-TM4C1294XL-REV-D/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC 3.0 BY)

Of far more use: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/File:EK-TM4C1294XL_REV_D_Design_Package.zip

[all_repair]

Not into TI eco system so far.  Just wondering how is their record in keeping their platform and old chips alive and manufacture so far?

[nixfu]

Ok.   One question, is this platform totally dependent on their web service or can I put my own up.

I have visions of a fickle oem deciding to just stop providing the service because they decide it was not profitable anymore. 

[JonnyBoats]

But I suspect most are going to try the out of box demo and IoT to get it up and running, and I don't think it's too much to expect it to work flawlessly in that regard.

I totally agree Dave. In my opinion TI generally does a rather poor job with their demos. For example they often include some Windows demo app that interfaces with a board but generally don't provide source code for the windows demo app. On the hardware side they include the ability to read the temperature of the chip, but how much nicer would it have been if they had included a light sensor where one could easily observe a change in value by covering the sensor! As you observed in your video, it is not easy to get the on chip temperature value to change, so how does one know if it is actually working?

For newcomers Arduino is hard to beat, extremely easy to get started. TI is far more oriented towards EEs than artsy-artsy types  looking to get their feet wet ;-)

[JonnyBoats]

Ok.   One question, is this platform totally dependent on their web service or can I put my own up.

I have visions of a fickle oem deciding to just stop providing the service because they decide it was not profitable anymore.

Their software is a demonstration application, you are free to write your own software to communicate with any website you like. You could use Plotly (https://plot.ly) for example.

[neotesla]

1) The price is excellent in my opinion - TI sells it for $20 US and ships for free virtually anywhere in the world. Where else can you get any sort of micro-controller with a built in Ethernet port for $20 delivered?

The pricing is in fact so good that I've already noticed a joker on eBay (re)selling the same board for more than twice the price (plus postage!)

[djacobow]

Once solution would be using open protocols and server software so you can run yourself or pick from one of N service providers, with the ability to redirect your device when you move to a different service (e.g. by modifying your DNS records).  Another solution is to use closed cloud system from a large and stable vendor that is much less likely to close shop.

So, the Spark allows just this. You can download the server code and run it locally, or on AWS, or whatever. I think if I were to roll out a commercial product based on Spark, I'd almost certainly do this.

http://spark.github.io/

That said, I am have a certain amount of cloud-backlash building in me, and I'd like to see more devices that can do their thing without interacting with some third party unnecessarily. I feel like a good rule of thumb is that data should stay local by default and only get pushed out to some external system if it benefits the user. So, for example, a thermostat might pull down weather and electric rate data, but it would not upload temperature setting data to some server so that the server could make the on/off decision.

[Monkeh]

1) The price is excellent in my opinion - TI sells it for $20 US and ships for free virtually anywhere in the world. Where else can you get any sort of micro-controller with a built in Ethernet port for $20 delivered?

The pricing is in fact so good that I've already noticed a joker on eBay (re)selling the same board for more than twice the price (plus postage!)

Not your typical joker, that guy is a Farnell dropshipper. Ripoff merchant, makes a fortune.

[Rasz]

maybe relevant:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/173169/faq_ftc_blog_endorsement_rules.html

No, it's not, because:
a) I bought it.
b) I not a Yank, FTC rules mean squat.

in case of #1 Im genuinely impressed, I would rather kill myself than talk for half an hour about iot and I suspect you are just as enthusiastic about it as I am

Dave, you seem 'on edge' during this video.  Not a criticism, just hoping everything is OK with you.

Thats it, at least Im not alone. I read it as 'lets get over with this garbage as fast as possible"

about #2 tho, US law applies to everyone, those who disagree get shot/kidnapped/liberated. Besides Google is US based and they will force everyone to disclose, at the very least by adding 'flag as concealed paid endorsement' option and deleting flagged clips. All the Gameplay/Game review channels are talking about it for a couple of days now.

Once solution would be using open protocols and server software so you can run yourself or pick from one of N service providers, with the ability to redirect your device when you move to a different service (e.g. by modifying your DNS records).  Another solution is to use closed cloud system from a large and stable vendor that is much less likely to close shop.

Jabber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP
Its not perfect, but it is open and decentralized

1) The price is excellent in my opinion - TI sells it for $20 US and ships for free virtually anywhere in the world. Where else can you get any sort of micro-controller with a built in Ethernet port for $20 delivered?

same place you get half of your products from, China.
$5 gets you Allwinter quad ARMv7 chip + Pmic chip, Even Intel is pushing its shitty (quad core x86 with HD graphics and everything) Atom chips at $5 in China.
 $20 gets you whole finished product, for example wireless router with 400MHz mips, 32MB ram and buildin lipo battery. Is TI very power efficient? so what, it will be connected over ethernet anyway, so why bother?

I dont get the purpose of this chip. What exactly would you build with it? Ethernet connected button with 1 second round the globe latency? That chip has rather hilarious >$10 price, mostly because they could slap iot badge on marketing material.

[neotesla]

Rasz, can you please provide links where the stuff you claim is $5-$10 can be purchased (in the form of a preprogrammed fully working board, not individual chips).

Thanks.

[zapta]

Once solution would be using open protocols and server software so you can run yourself or pick from one of N service providers, with the ability to redirect your device when you move to a different service (e.g. by modifying your DNS records).  Another solution is to use closed cloud system from a large and stable vendor that is much less likely to close shop.

Jabber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP
Its not perfect, but it is open and decentralized

What a coincident, just started this week to dive into a the world of massive XMPP routing.

[VK3DRB]

The top overlay is crap. Why couldn't the PCB designer BACK ANNOTATE the designators to the schematic? White ink over holes, ambiguous designators, placement inconsistency, test point and designators running into each other, labels not lined up, pin 1 markers missing from the booster pack connectors. Whoever laid out the board obviously had little or no experience as a debug technician. TI has demonstrated a lack of PCB layout standards, or lack of process. 

The 45 degree micro was good though. A lot of engineers don't realise one of the benefits of 45 degree placement of a large QFIC is that is can improve solder paste screening by reducing shadowing, resulting in significant improvements in first pass yields. It also sometimes aids in layout. EXCELLENT. 

[miguelvp]

Once solution would be using open protocols and server software so you can run yourself or pick from one of N service providers, with the ability to redirect your device when you move to a different service (e.g. by modifying your DNS records).  Another solution is to use closed cloud system from a large and stable vendor that is much less likely to close shop.

Jabber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP
Its not perfect, but it is open and decentralized

exosite uses XMPP at least for this chronos project, but same deal.

https://support.exosite.com/hc/en-us/articles/200095748-TI-Chronos-Watch-RF-Gateway-Project

XMPP MUC (multi user chat)  is pretty easy to implement as far as the client side goes.

[Rasz]

Rasz, can you please provide links where the stuff you claim is $5-$10 can be purchased (in the form of a preprogrammed fully working board, not individual chips).

Thanks.

sure, how about $2? of maybe $0.5? do you have problem reading quoted text? _$20_ was right there

but ok, half the discussed price:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-in-1-Mini-Portable-150Mbps-3G-WIFI-Mobile-Wireless-Router-Hotspot-SHPG-/371043640145
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HAME-MPR-A1-3in1-150Mbps-Mini-WIFI-3G-Wireless-Router-1800mAh-Mobile-Power-Bank-/230998891715
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/hame/mpr-a1
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/hame/mpr-a2

cheaper, without battery:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-Portable-3G-4G-MiFi-Wireless-N-USB-WiFi-Hotspot-Router-AP-150Mbps-Wlan-/181415038350
http://my-embedded.blogspot.com/2013/12/mini-4g-router-rt5350f.html


wifi b/g/n, usb 2.0, ethernet, lipo, linux on board, end product including shipping, at TI bare chip price point
Ralink is owned by Mediatek now. Mediatek sells whole GSM handset on a chip SoCs at $2-3.

[neotesla]

sure, how about $2? of maybe $0.5? do you have problem reading quoted text? _$20_ was right there
 

You seem to be having difficulties reading your own post, you moron.

[Rasz]

sure, how about $2? of maybe $0.5? do you have problem reading quoted text? _$20_ was right there
 

You seem to be having difficulties reading your own post, you moron.

aww, illiterate baby got mad

btw
http://www.amazon.com/Pogoplug-Backup-and-Sharing-Device/dp/B005GM1Q1O
128MB RAM, 1Gbit Ethernet, USB 2.0, running debian

Again, can anyone give me justification for this TI part at this (>$5) price point? NXP(LPC4072)/freescale (k60) offer almost sister chips at $4 in one off quantities already. Even atmel has something at half the price.

[EEVblog]

but ok, half the discussed price:
*snip*

None of those items are ready to use bareboard development boards with documentation, support (manufacturer, community, market longevity etc), compatible compiler tools, defined I/O expansion with headers and add-on boards etc.
You can't just compare closed consumer junk with a dev board, not even close to being the same thing.

[EEVblog]

Thats it, at least Im not alone. I read it as 'lets get over with this garbage as fast as possible"

It did turn into a bit of that in the end.

about #2 tho, US law applies to everyone, those who disagree get shot/kidnapped/liberated. Besides Google is US based and they will force everyone to disclose, at the very least by adding 'flag as concealed paid endorsement' option and deleting flagged clips.

Nope.

[Rasz]

but ok, half the discussed price:
*snip*

None of those items are ready to use bareboard development boards with documentation, support (manufacturer, community, market longevity etc), compatible compiler tools, defined I/O expansion with headers and add-on boards etc.
You can't just compare closed consumer junk with a dev board, not even close to being the same thing.

I didnt link them to say everyone should make products by hacking some obscure chinese bargain bin router , but to show TI has nothing interesting to offer by trying to sell bare chip at the price point of _elaborate end products_.

Here is a dev board
http://www.asiarf.com/Smallest-Tiny-Ralink-802-11n-Wireless-AP-Router-Module-Board-AWM002-product-view-375.html
$15 retail, $10 (moq unknown). Its the same board they put on indiegogo some time ago. FCC CE and all that jazz.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/5-pcs-Free-Shipping-New-Genuine-RT5350F-RT5350-RALINK-wireless-router-chip-real-shot-spot/1931197855.html
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-new-AR9331-AL1A-ATHEROS-Chip-QFN/1873233251.html
bare chips <$4, probably less if you have boots on the ground in china. Its not digikey, but you dont buy on digikey when you manufacture in china.

iot is supposed to be milions-to-billions of devices around us (according to iot believers). I find it hilarious how someone at TI sold managements on the idea of shipping million of those chips at $12 a pop, because IoT, and teh cloud, and flying cars! Nxp, freescale, st all have products at 1/3 the price already on the market.


ps: About Intel, yes Im angry at them :/
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2014/02/04/intel-likely-to-sell-tablet-chips-at-or-below-cost-says-bernstein/
http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel-aggressively-drops-prices-on-system-on-chips-for-tablets-report/

This smells like that time Intel was caught bribing pc makers not to use AMD, but this time its against ARM.

[made2hack]

OK, so the dev board is 19 Euros on Farnell, and the chip, by itself, the XM4C129DNCPDTI1 is 12 Euros 

Is there any incentive to develop your own PCB to use this chip if you can get this complete package for such little difference?

Yes, the chip goes down in price for 300+ pieces to 9 Euros, but still, tough to justify developing your own.

[Precipice]

iot is supposed to be milions-to-billions of devices around us (according to iot believers). I find it hilarious how someone at TI sold managements on the idea of shipping million of those chips at $12 a pop, because IoT, and teh cloud, and flying cars! Nxp, freescale, st all have products at 1/3 the price already on the market.

Err, you're complaining about the retail price of one chip, through distribution, being too high to use in a millions+ rollout?
If only there was some kind of a bulk discount...
Low volume prices , in my experience, seem to be no indication of proper supported volume prices.

Edit: I'm not saying this is the one chip to rule them all(tm) -just that $12 is irrelevant. And it's very, very nice to have a full Ether interface without needing a PHY.

[Rasz]

Err, you're complaining about the retail price of one chip, through distribution, being too high to use in a millions+ rollout?
If only there was some kind of a bulk discount...
Low volume prices , in my experience, seem to be no indication of proper supported volume prices.

Edit: I'm not saying this is the one chip to rule them all(tm) -just that $12 is irrelevant. And it's very, very nice to have a full Ether interface without needing a PHY.

erm, competition is pushing similarly configured arm M4's at $4 in single quantities, and just like you said it only goes down from there.

[Niels]

3) Compared to  Arduinos and Raspberry PIs which ship in the millions this is a relatively obscure platform; you should not expect to find a large community and lots of online support for this product. The ecosystem is very small compared to Arduinos and PIs.

It depends on what you want.

The CPU in the PI (Broadcom BCM2835) is also obscure since it is intended for high volume consumer market, and in order to get the data sheet you need to sign an NDA.

[zapta]

Is there any incentive to develop your own PCB to use this chip if you can get this complete package for such little difference?

Of course, if you need to have your own custom design/product.

[Slow Poke]

My frustration with a lot of these ioT thingies is that they always rely on a third party service or server. Some of em charge money, that's a problem. Bigger problem is :what if that server goes down ? Or the host goes bankrupt. It's game over !

Why can't these devices simply serve by themselves ?

Well, generally true for microcontrollers.  Use a database, say, MySQL on a server [yours] and write a Web page front end for control.  Write on-board code to react to that.  Not much memory to work with locally.

[AdamPanic]

I'll give you my view on what occurred with that code, from a bit wrangler like myself.

Code: [Select]

IF (Comparision IS TRUE)
THEN (enter event)
UNTIL (Comparision IS NOT TRUE

That last line is a potential infinite loop. It is essentially waiting for the condition to change.
It doesn't. Eventually some watchdog timer times out and resets the board into offline.

For a better diagnosis I'll need to read the section in the guide the cover the "programming" aspect.

[JonnyBoats]

One thing that is absent from the discussion of the connected launchpad is that it is part of a bigger ecosystem. For example TI also makes a Wi-Fi connected launchpad for the IoT, the CC3200 (http://www.ti.com/tool/cc3200-launchxl ).

Another way this comes into play is that the TI compilers (such as CCS) can be used for multiple lines of chips from the simple MSP430s to ARM processors.

Then there are the various boards that work with the various launchpads. Not to mention that the use of an ARM core gives a certain level of compatibility with ARM chips from other vendors.

Anyone who has used an Arduino will immediately recognize that much of the value comes from the various shields that can be used with it.

Unfortunately it is not really possible for Dave to go over the entire ecosystem from TI in a single blog post.

 

[rsjsouza]

erm, competition is pushing similarly configured arm M4's at $4 in single quantities, and just like you said it only goes down from there.

Bullshit. I can see that a LPC4072 for $8 in single quantities with a lot less memory (64kB flash), where the closer 512kB M4's LPC4078 for $11 as well as a MK64FX512 for $10 are much closer in price to the  XM4C129 at $17 - but this part has 1MB of Flash.

Despite the IoT marketing spin, your comparison between programmable microcontrollers with ASIC routers is really pointless. No, a "_elaborate end products_" does not compare to a fully programmable part - different markets with different purposes.

[German_EE]

After watching both videos I'm more likely to buy the 'Back to the Future' Lego kit, and I don't have any children.

[Isaac000]

I have a couple of these boards and like them. I think there are a couple of points worth noting:

1) The price is excellent in my opinion - TI sells it for $20 US and ships for free virtually anywhere in the world. Where else can you get any sort of micro-controller with a built in Ethernet port for $20 delivered?

How about Freescale's FRDM-K64F? It's slightly pricier at just over $30, but it also seems to come with a lot more. SD card connector, accelerometer, DAC, etc.
There are several free software tool options and generally is very easy to get started. As a bonus, Arduino form factor compatible so you can tag on a lot of other peripheral boards.

[JonnyBoats]

How about Freescale's FRDM-K64F? It's slightly pricier at just over $30, but it also seems to come with a lot more. SD card connector, accelerometer, DAC, etc.
There are several free software tool options and generally is very easy to get started. As a bonus, Arduino form factor compatible so you can tag on a lot of other peripheral boards.

I was not trying to suggest that the TI board was the only good deal or even the best deal out there. There are lots of good development boards.

With respect to the Freescale board, what you seem to be saying is that if one spends more one can get more, which is true of most things in life ;-)

[VK3DRB]

Is there any incentive to develop your own PCB to use this chip if you can get this complete package for such little difference?

Of course, if you need to have your own custom design/product.

It would be an embarrassment to put this tacky TI board in a professional piece of equipment. You won't impress the chicks with this PCB from TI.

[psbarrett]

Hey all. I work for Exosite, hope it's kosher for me to weigh in on this.

I'll try to answer some of the questions that have been raised so far about the Exosite side of things. (I don't know much about the firmware, it was developed by TI.) If any one has more I'll try to watch this thread, otherwise you can send an email to suppport@exosite.com (I read those along with a few other engineers).

First, from the video, the alert issue. You got it pretty much in the video, it's not a key-up/key-down value. It's actually a press counter, each time it you press the button it increments the value. That's why the alert would work for you the first time. It's actually not possible to do an alert every time the value changes with the Events interface, you'd need to use a script. One of my coworkers posted an example of how you'd do this in the blog post comments.

Then there was the stability issue you noticed. While it was probably to do with your Internet connection going down there are also some stability issues with the application, it's usually good for at least 24 hours, but that's about it. It is just a demo, it's not meant to be rock solid.

There was some questioning about latency. Most of the latency comes from the fact that these devices use polling for their reads so when you toggle an led on the dashboard the value gets updated on our system, but it won't actually turn the LED on or off until the device goes out an checks what the value is on out platform. Right now this is how all of our public APIs work, but we have some push methods in the pipeline (but no promises on when those will be done, if you've got something big where you need it let us know).

Mikey mentioned Arduino stuff. If you want to play with that, we've got a library with examples for most of the official Internet enabled versions: https://github.com/exosite-garage/arduino_exosite_library

For any other devices, all of our (non-custom) APIs are documented on http://docs.exosite.com and they all use standard protocols like HTTP or CoAP (basically a lightweight, binary HTTP over UDP).

Let me know if I missed anything.

[miguelvp]

Let me know if I missed anything.

How about the XMPP usage on the TI chronos,  wouldn't that use TCP over SSL? Is it available to the Launchpad as well?

[psbarrett]

How about the XMPP usage on the TI chronos,  wouldn't that use TCP over SSL? Is it available to the Launchpad as well?

I'm not all that familiar with the XMPP interface. (And know even less about that specific demo.) It definitely uses TCP and TLS/SSL is an option. It's "available" to the launch pad, but I don't know that you'd want to use it. XMPP is a somewhat heavy protocol. It's also a somewhat limited API, you're basically limited to reading the list of datasources and reading from and writing to datasources. You'd probably be much further ahead using one of the HTTP APIs. The data API (http://docs.exosite.com/data/) is just a simple POST or GET for writing and reading data. If you need to do more than that, you'd use the RPC API (http://docs.exosite.com/rpc/) which uses HTTP and JSON.

If you've already got something that does XMPP, or even just understand it really well, don't let me stop you from using it, but if you're starting from nothing the HTTP APIs are probably going to be easier to use.

[kaz911]

Hi Exosite

I have tried your IF - but I must say - I'm very underwhelmed to be honest. (Apart from your sales guys took less than 24 hours from connection time to try and up-sell)

Everything on the site is soo slooow. Last night - 2 hours downtime (and that was not on my end) - problems with CIK registration on my 2nd launchpad xl - graphs that get so full of data they take for EVER to show or highlight (typical when you let the client browser handle display via jquery and javascript). No post process data handling like "Aggregate every 24 hours to 1 min interval". So to me at least the ti.exosite.com seems far from finished - even for a Demo environment.

It does not really inspire confidence if the demo sites are not as stable as any kind of production site. People would use the demo site to get an idea of what would be possible with your system.

But thanks for letting us try.