I’ve been working with the Electric Imp for some time now, and would like to offer my services on projects that need a jump start, or engineering help. I have applied the Imp to IoT projects in the oilfield, collecting data, controlling pumps and managing cloud services. Drop me a line at electricimp@systemsofmerritt.com
The imp is a great device, and has a gazillion things it can do. I hope your imps are assisting with control and not the primary means of control. Specifically relying on the imp to control critical equipment might be a risk. WiFi loss, power loss, cloud loss, human programming error, etc.
I’m sure you’ll get some folks interested in this. It’s a really cost-effective solution compared to the Raspberry PI, Arduino, etc.
In my application, the Imp is relaying control setting to a pump controller. It also reads pump settings via a Modbus interface I designed. Good point on liability issues, which must be considered.
Pump feedback, or valve position feedback … perfect application for the imp.
Using an auxiliary run contact on a MCP (motor circuit protector) for example.
There are 16-bit IO expanders to make your own IO using i2c … saving imp pins.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8130
You could sort of make your own PLC. neat stuff!
Hmmm … a PLIC (programmable logic imp controller).
Instead of graphic rungs for ladder logic, it would be statement list logic.
PS, I’m interested in the Modbus part, for use with industrial PID temperature controllers. Maybe you can elaborate on that with code on Github or make a library.
I designed and built my own Imp002 interface card which included Modbus and RS-232 interfaces. I started out with the April board. It’s a great way to get familiar with basic Imp interfacing and programming.
For Modbus, I used serial I/O to interface to a standard Modbus hardware interface chip.
Here’s an article from my website explaining my Imp system which you might enjoy. http://systemsofmerritt.com/Engineering/internet-of-things-iot
I also wrote a tutorial on interfacing the April board to a temperature sensor: http://systemsofmerritt.com/Engineering/interfacing-to-the-electric-imp-temperature/274