"The cards will be on sale to developers by the end of June for $25 each"
"When the $25 card is installed in a slot and powered up, it will find the ID number and automatically transmit the information to Electric Imp’s servers."
I don't like the idea of a central server as default. Although that's a very good functionality (together with SSL and auto-update) one of the first things serious developers will look for is how to switch it off or mod it - I'm assuming I won't have the choice to switch this off. It will also spark development of open-hardware alternatives that don't dial home. The price is very low and the design is very compact, which makes me believe that the income will be generated by an online subscription to push/process data at the central server. That is not a bad model, but it also means that I won't be using it to control anything in my house because some day the connection will be lost for an amount of time. This scenario is normally caught by a local gateway, but I don't see them in this setup.
The concept is that groups developing internet-enabled devices provide a slot for this imp card, which takes care of the heavy lifting of getting online and connected.
It would be very easy to put the power supply to this card under software control on the final host platform.
http://edn.com/electronics-news/4373185/Former-Apple-Google-...
"The cards will be on sale to developers by the end of June for $25 each"
"When the $25 card is installed in a slot and powered up, it will find the ID number and automatically transmit the information to Electric Imp’s servers."
I don't like the idea of a central server as default. Although that's a very good functionality (together with SSL and auto-update) one of the first things serious developers will look for is how to switch it off or mod it - I'm assuming I won't have the choice to switch this off. It will also spark development of open-hardware alternatives that don't dial home. The price is very low and the design is very compact, which makes me believe that the income will be generated by an online subscription to push/process data at the central server. That is not a bad model, but it also means that I won't be using it to control anything in my house because some day the connection will be lost for an amount of time. This scenario is normally caught by a local gateway, but I don't see them in this setup.