[HH] Electric Imp Platform

[Tom Metro]

Kurt L Keville wrote:
> http://blog.electricimp.com/

This is one of these "Internet of Things" devices, designed to help
facilitate easily adding Internet based data collection or control to
devices.

More details at:

http://electricimp.com/product/

  The Electric Imp connectivity platform, featuring fully integrated
  hardware, software, OS, APIs, cloud servers, makes it possible to
  effectively empower your devices with intelligence, scalability and
  flexibility.
  ...
  The Electric Imp platform starts with the imp, a powerful module
  containing WiFi and a processor that acts as the gateway to connect
  your device or service to the Internet, providing it with a brain in
  the cloud.

And:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/1129

So it's a tiny (32mm x 24mm) $30 embedded computer board with a
Cortex-M3, with WiFi and some I/Os:

  ...only six pins available for application use, they're six very
  capable pins. UARTs, I2C, SPI, analog in and out, PWMs, GPIOs... all
  selectable under software control.

It's actually built using an SD card form-factor, but doesn't do
anything if plugged into an SD card reader. The manufacturer used that
packaging due to cheap, available connectors. You typically use it with
a small breakout board.

It comes loaded with an OS and is tied to a cloud service for data
collection/interaction.

  ...you develop your code in a browser-based IDE and can compile and
  run your code on the Imp - wherever it is in the world - in under a
  second. The Imp even sends logging back to your browser. Software that
  runs on the Imp is written in Squirrel, a C-like language, with
  extensions to communicate with the hardware interfaces and the
  service. As the Squirrel code runs on top of the electric imp OS, you
  get many big system benefits like buffered I/O and crash recovery -
  plus you can push updates to devices in the field with a few clicks.


When it phones home to the cloud, it actually uses a "TLS encrypted"
link. Nice.

But do you really want your embedded devices to be entirely dependent on
a cloud service provided by the manufacturer? (Not sure if they offer a
way to reprogram the devoices to work with a private server. The
Adafruit video says it does not use open source server software.)

 -Tom