Hello,
i just got an imp, and i must say it does wonderfully what’s it supposed to do.
But i know i’m not the first and last person to would like to see that kind of device be able to do more than it can now.
A lot of people are creating home automation setups, or even simple device-computer communication, where speed, availability and control are essential.
I’m working as a programmer in an innovative studio, and all of our projects involve communication between devices and computers, but most of them don’t get to have access to internet (theatre for shows, private meetings, public places…).
Also, synchronization between devices and computers are very important, for example if the device is controlling some visuals or music filters.
That’s why it saddens me to see such a great product not being able to be used at its full potential, just because everything has to happen via a web server.
So basically, i would love to see support for local server or support for UDP / TCP communications on LAN IPs.
Thank your for your time and dedication,
Ben Kuper
Too bad… i would like very much to know what reasons are there to restrain the capabilities of the imp in such a way that it repulses more and more developers (you just have to see the comments on the sparkfun product page).
What other devices are you thinking about ? because from my knowledge, i don’t know anything as well packed, small strong and price-friendly as the imp, with a cortex M3 and wifi inside.
Our current project involve electronic integration in juggling equipment, an i’m searching for the best controller, knowing that space, robustness and weight are first matter, but with wireless communication and a decent MC.
@benkuper - we’ve been through this many times before. The imp does not do what you want. Yes, the hardware is capable, no we have no plans to make it work with local network comms.
This means the imp can’t be used for latency-critical local network things and we’re happy with not being able to sell to people wanting those features. As others have noted, there are many wifi modules which will do this local communications piece, and we have no desire to compete with them.
Sorry, but as a startup we can’t be everything to everyone. We have to concentrate and do one thing really well.
Thanks for you explanations Hugo, DolfTraanberg and sbright33, i searched for this answer on the forum and only found “No” as an answer.
I apologize if i made you explain it one more time.
You have all good points, and even if i’m a bit sad to not be able to use it for most of my projects, i understand your point of view.
Thank you for your time and i wish you much success with this wonderful product.
Ben
PS: if you have a cool Wireless embedded MCU (Zigbee, Wifi, bluetooth, anything with enough bandwith and correct range) with a decent Microcontroller like Cortex M3, please share it, i’m all ears !
I may start a new thread on this subject, but I’ll have a go at it here. I would like to do exactly what @benkuper is asking for, without laying the demand on the imp. In my designs I do not expect the imp to do most of the controls/processing. I expect I will hook an mp to a second controller and have them talk over uart or I2C. alternatively I may just have the IMP talk to an off the shelf device (such as a LabJack) and provide local data collection.
So, with wifi, I would be able to go to a webpage that has the imp confered data presented. Without wifi, I would like to be able to plug a computer directly into the device and download data, and perhaps get a current status of I/O. The Imp could direct the flow of data for that: Talk to the LabJack (over UART converted to USB) to acquire current data and send to computer over and I2C based UART chip. It could also dump historical data from an I2C storage device via that same path.
But I dont know jack about making an excel macro or windows program to receive and present the data the IMP is pushing.
Any thoughts on this architecture? or how to present it?
COSM can take data from Imp and make a CSV type file. This can be easily imported into Excel. I can show you how to make pretty COSM graphs if you’d like.