Next week I am doing a workshop at a university, dealing with tangible computing, rapid prototyping and the internet of things. We introduce the students to a variety of sensors and microcontrollers, and I would like to bring the electric imp into focus as well.
But, I am pondering a bit on the best way to do this.
With the Arduino board, everybody just installs the software on their computers, and the boards flow around and are getting played with.
With the imp, I need a developer account, that people can work from.
The best way I can imagine to do this, is
I make a new developer account, for these workshops.
I blinkup all the imps that can be played with with this developer account
I let all the students access the same developer account, and work on the imps from there
Have the imps marked, so there is no confusion for people working using the same dev account.
Alternatively I could just let each of the students create a developer account, but that would make it a bit more difficoult with the Blinkup. (Because Iphone/Ipad is needed for the blinkup app to work properly)
I think you might have some difficulty if multiple users are accessing the same account simultaneously from different browsers, some sessions might time out, but the Imp team would have to speak to that.
I do want to mention my iOS app Pitchfork. I made it free for the very reason that it was being used in classrooms, so hopefully it can be helpful to you.
Let us know your experience, I intend to run some Imp workshops/classes in the very near future.
You’d really need multiple accounts if everyone is going to use the IDE - but that does mean they will need to blink their devices up too. Surely they all have smartphones, though?
With the current version of the imp OS, blinkup works fine with all android phones we have come across with the exception of the 2011 droid X2 which we’re still working on.
@Hugo - I just have not personally experienced a successful Blinkup using an Android device. - And I have tried several different models… - But, most likely, me and my friends just all have old phones
Even though the best solution is to get everybody to make a developer account, I expect it still to be easier to get going than with Arduino. Arduino is always a bit of a hazzle with drivers on different windows / mac - And the occasional student insisting on using Linux.
Would love to know what phones you’ve had problems with so we can add them to our test farm then… we have some pretty old ones there and as I said, only one that fails. We’ve got SGS2, SGS3, SGS4, SGS4mini, Note 2, Galaxy pocket, LG P505, LG Optimus L3, Nexus 4, Nexus 7, HTC Desire X, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus One, unnamed no-brand tablets and phones, etc etc.
I have similar question.
Idea is that I have several “categories” I want to use imps: 5 for one student project, 10 for another project and 3 for again different project.
And students can see only one imp in each category.
I will done all BlinkUp so students just login and use then - program if necessary, observe logs etc.
I don’t want to create 3 or more different emails for that (is possible but not very useful). And here still students can observe other imps too. Of course - I can make a different Model for each imp - software the same but name is different. Not very handy too.
As I understand -currently there isn’t such option.
So what can be the best way to implement something like that?
If they don’t have to change the code, are they’re really just looking at logs, then maybe you could use a service like loggly to dump logs to for general viewing?
