I want to develop a product that is sold to an end user. I don’t want any of the electronics accessible from the outside. All the customer gets is a ‘box’, with a power cord and a single visible LED.
Up until now, my device has been controlled by a Bluetooth UART and an app running on either an iOS or Android phone/tablet, but I can see that using a web-enabled interface could be advantageous for a number of reasons.
What I can’t get my head around is how I could build and sell a device that an end-user configures to use in their home, with their wifi network. It seems that everything I read leads me to the point that this is a tinkerer’s toy, that it is inherintly tied to a single person and their electric imp account.
In order for a customer to use blinkup, they would need access to my account details, is that right? I would also need to mount the SD-card reader in such a position that the opto reader is externally accessible.
How does the customer manage changing networks? They move house and the new network details are different to the old one - but they have already packed and moved and the old router is no longer available to them.
Or am I expecting too much of this product?
I’m only an intro level hacker so all this could be wrong:
Most people in this forum use the imps in “developer mode”. When a friend trials my product it’s still connected to my account.
In “commercial mode” you could make millions of imp powered devices and users only need to enter their SSID and password. The imps get “blessed” on the production line tying them to a manufacturer.
The imp is fantastic for tinkering and caters to us hackers very well but it’s designed for massive commercial deployments.
Thanks rocket - since I posted that I found the ‘blessing’ docs.
They make perfect sense and now I think I have my new interface system!
Looking forward to developing my new prototype.
@rocketfire is correct, @Ladaero. Electric Imp has two kinds of account: Developer and Commercial. Makers and developers of prototypes start off with Developer accounts. When a project is ready to transition to product, it’s time to consider a Commercial account. This involves, as the name suggests, a commercial relationship between your company and Electric Imp that is based on project shipments and other business considerations. I’d recommend talking it through with our sales team well before then to help you assess whether that’s the route that you want to take.
PS. There’s a maker-centric article on the blessing process over at our Community Site that you might like to read.
@Ledaero - You can also take a look at our customers page to see some examples of commercially available products using our platform 
Thanks guys, you (and Jenn on the sales team) have been very helpful.
Now to do the coding bit…
