

Real world, meet the Internet. - xpressyoo
http://www.electricimp.com/

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toemetoch
In case you're looking for info on the WiFi card itself (couldn't find it on
the site itself), go here:

[http://edn.com/electronics-news/4373185/Former-Apple-
Google-...](http://edn.com/electronics-news/4373185/Former-Apple-Google-
Facebook-engineers-launch-IoT-startup-item-2)

" _The cards will be on sale to developers by the end of June for $25 each_ "

" _When the $25 card is installed in a slot and powered up, it will find the
ID number and automatically transmit the information to Electric Imp’s
servers._ "

I don't like the idea of a central server as default. Although that's a very
good functionality (together with SSL and auto-update) one of the first things
serious developers will look for is how to switch it off or mod it - I'm
assuming I won't have the choice to switch this off. It will also spark
development of open-hardware alternatives that don't dial home. The price is
very low and the design is very compact, which makes me believe that the
income will be generated by an online subscription to push/process data at the
central server. That is not a bad model, but it also means that I won't be
using it to control anything in my house because some day the connection will
be lost for an amount of time. This scenario is normally caught by a local
gateway, but I don't see them in this setup.

~~~
joezydeco
The concept is that groups developing internet-enabled devices provide a slot
for this imp card, which takes care of the heavy lifting of getting online and
connected.

It would be very easy to put the power supply to this card under software
control on the final host platform.

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groby_b
Yeah, "no thank" is the answer that comes to mind. The fact that they all dial
home to a central server is a giant security risk, not to mention a single
point of failure.

Given that none of the cable companies are exceedingly capable at keeping a
connection up 24/7, this makes the imp useless for any devices in a typical
home.

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EvanAnderson
The module certainly looks neat, but being designed to use the manufacturer's
"secure, reliable, distributed internet service" makes it appear to be useless
for disconnected applications. Not every application of Wifi involves networks
connected to the Internet.

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tathagatadg
Can some one give me some info/pointers on what kind of stack would such a M2M
effort need? I just joined a nascent venture which is trying to do something
similar - but a bit more ambitious ... make it device/protocol agnostic. I'm
trying to find more resources to read, but haven't been making much progress
in terms of selecting robust open source technology. Take a look at
<http://www.axeda.com/> .. these guys seem to be doing pretty neat stuff!

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jakejake
This looks like fun, I wonder what type of connections, sensors and such are
available for the card in order to connect it with your devices? I wouldn't
mind making some kind of monitoring system for my fish tank (they already
exist but it would be fun to build my own)

~~~
blhack
There are tons of superior wireless chips out there now that accomplish this.

Better yet just run a cable. You have to power the thing anyway.

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swalsh
Info seems a bit fuzzy, does it look like the chip will be capable of ipv6?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
This is purely speculation, but I would imagine not, as the IP stack is
probably baked into the hardware.

~~~
toemetoch
ARM controllers like this Cortex-M3 come in a range with flash capacity going
from 8 to 512 KiB and up. TCP/IP stacks in embedded go from ~7KiB for uIP to
256KiB compiled depending on strictness/flexibility of implementation. The
controllers can probably upgrade to IPv6 because of the nature of wireless
firmware upgrades in embedded systems. The firmware is spread over different
packets, so to assure a successful firmware download it's always written to a
reserved region of progmem and checked before doing the actual code upgrade.
If they did their homework they have flash space that is (2 + margin)*code
size. My bet's on yes, it'll upgrade to IPv6.

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pbreit
I spent a minute or 2 on the site and have no idea what is being offered or
proposed.

~~~
rondon1
yes. I think they are selling a system on a chip with WIFI. But they are
marketing WIFI on everything.

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sparknlaunch
Slick website but not sure how this differs to current technology?

Can devices and programs already access the internet through existing wifi?

