Arduino + WiFi on Indiegogo

[marcoschwartz]

Hello EEVBlog community,

I am Marco Schwartz, CEO & founder of Open Home Automation (http://openhomeautomation.net), and I want to share our latest campaign on Indiegogo.

We recently noticed a trend in our audience: people are really interested by connecting their projects to the web to integrate them into an "Internet of Things" framework. And in particular people are interested by using the CC3000 WiFi chip from TI.

So we thought about a new product: put one of these CC3000 WiFi chip directly on an Arduino Uno-like board, so people don't have to add external components or shields to get WiFi connectivity (or buy an Arduino Yun which is more complex).

I think that this product can really interest people on this forum, so let me know if you need more details about the project, or just reply here to give me some feedback !

The link to the campaign:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/arduino-compatible-board-with-integrated-wifi/x/817698

Cheers,
Marco Schwartz

[thefatmoop]

Looks like a cool project. The downside to all crowdfunded projects is that the customer/supporter must wait a pretty long time to get their product. So make sure your product is worth that wait!

That being said your product looks like you've just thrown the wifi adapter chip on an arduino board - and that's it. Customers can go buy that exact module from adafruit right now without having to wait potentially months. Do you really need 15k$ to get this product started? Are you really creating something new?

I'd suggest finding a way that you can reprogram the arduino over the wifi chip and create your own bootloader. That way the user wouldnt need physical access to it - I'd consider supporting that.