Particle IoT 4+

Barely functional interface with minimal usage

Update - After finding that the Tinker functionality is not robustly implemented in the hardware, and the apps failure to recognize incompatible installation may actually be a firmware shortcoming, I'm adding a couple stars back. I still think this app is very limited as it doesn't allow any debugging, upgrading, flashing, or recovery for devices.

Super terrible, why do we need this?

This app is brutally bad. I’ve setup numerous photons in my student lab and frequently it just doesn’t work and nothing you can do will make it connect. There’s no diagnostics readily apparent. You’ll be quick to get a fail message but have no idea why. I suppose it wouldn’t really matter if they did give you a reason as no tools exist to correct it. There’s basically no desktop support either. If you want to configure this you’ll be getting into terminal and hombrew. I setup about a dozen of these per semester and one or two simply won’t connect to the app. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I keep buying these things.

Developer Response ,

I'm sorry you've been having this experience, and I'm sorry to only be responding to this message now. If you have any further issues with Photon setup, please open up a ticket (support.particle.io) and reference this comment.

Again, my apologies for the late response!

Does well what it’s meant to do

Useful for quick checkup of online devices or for setting up a new device. I wish it has some options for saving latest published messages or for creating a custom interfaces using cloud functions. Looking forward for more features from Particle’s awesome team.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback! It's true - as we use Webhooks to move Published data between device and server, we don't store Published data. If a history of Particle Publishes is important for your project, I'd recommend routing your messages via some 3rd Party Service to store them permanently.

There's some more information about Webhooks and a list of readymade integrations for moving your data around on the tutorials page of our website. (If you haven't already, check out IFTTT!)