Amazing!

General
#1

Hello,

I have been working with MRF24WB0MA/MB (for quite a while now) and yesterday night I find about electric imp. I haven’t done enough reading but I keep reading about it. I would like to ask a couple of questions to add to my knowledge:

1 - Can I run my code on the card (wifi chip)
2 - What happens if there’s no internet connection (I read somewhere that the program doesn’t run if is not connected?)
3 - I can do a design that doesn’t require the card but if you add it you have Wifi support, is this correct?
4 - What’s the optimal reception distance to the router with the SD card (do you have a diagram of this?)
5 - For design purposes, the price of the card is amazingly low but if you go on production runs the $2x price seems a little bit expensive for an end user, is there any way to lower that price?

I still can’t believe it, this looks like what I have been looking for, still trying to stop myself from ordering a couple of them to start playing with it, but so far it sounds amazing!

Thanks!
Juan

#2

Oh, I forget another question

6 - Can I turn off the blinking led programmatically? The one inside the card.

#3
  1. Yes - the Electric Imp is a lot more than a wifi chip… Electric Imp is a platform solution that includes the imp hardware, blinkup, a cloud based IDE (and tools to make communication between the device and the server really simple).
  2. Our latest firmware release included the ability to create handlers for when the imp goes offline. Using these you can create logic for when there’s no internet connection.
  3. Yes - In fact, one of the reasons we choose the SD form factor was so that the imp could be optional… (this assumes you have a separate processor and the imp is primarily acting as a connectivity solution). If you’re looking at something that must have an imp in it we also have a solder down module.
  4. In all of our wifi range tests, we’ve found the imp to have better reception distance than an iPhone.
  5. We have volume pricing - contact sales@electricimp.com for more details.
  6. No - however the LED stops blinking after about a minute of being connected.

Hope that helps!

#4

@WifiThis,

  1. for small runs of let’s say 500pcs the actual price is $19.50 (smartmaker.com) that’s not a bad price. You need to think that this is a full system, with microcontroller and GPIOs (12 in the module version) so you can run most of the projects without actually add almost any cost.

If you want to test run the things, take a look at the Hanna development board.

  1. You can “control” the LEDs using one of the pins if you want. All what you need to do is to connect the LEDs to ground trough a transistor that you control from a pin. If you don’t want the LEDs blinking, even at start up when they inform about the online status for 60 seconds, you simply cut the connection to ground bringing the chosen pin up or down, according to the configuration you chosen.

Dimitri

#5

Appreciated for all the answers. I’m kind of in shock. For the past year or so I have been thinking in creating some kind of project around the MRF24WB0MA/MB pretty much like this one, but the form factor of the electric imp is extremely appealing.

I’m looking forward to my first project with electric imp.