IoT is amazing and world-changing. It's also hard to implement.
That conundrum is exactly what Particle, which raised $20 million last year to simplify the emerging internet of things, is trying to fix with Particle Mesh. Mesh offers two chipsets for enabling gateway nodes for IoT mesh networks -- one for WiFi, the other for cellular networks -- and a $9 version for connecting smart devices to the gateway nodes.
Simply put, Mesh is lego bricks for IoT development.
Mesh networks make sense for low-cost IoT devices because instead of each device requiring both expensive hardware (LTE radio chips) and expensive connectivity (cellular subscriptions), developers can simply connect five, 10, or 50 devices to one single network connection. In addition, longer-distance cellular radios require more power than short-range networks.
Apparently, there's a massive need for simple ways to implement cheap network connectivity for IoT devices.
"Particle has already sold 5,000 units in 5 hours," a representative told me today. "Not bad for hardware that's not available until the summer!"
The local network protocol is OpenThread, a mesh networking technology originally built by Google and released under and open source license. It's self-forming and self-healing by design, which is good for complex and changing IoT realities, and IPv6 compliant, so each node on the network will have its own addressable IP address.
While the underlying technology is buzzword-compliant, it's also easy to use, says Particle.
"In the six years we've been supporting IoT creators, we're honored to have helped more than 150,000 creators bring their products online--and learned a lot about the toughest problems that innovators encounter," said Zach Supalla, Particle co-founder and CEO. "We built Particle Mesh to address a gap in the market: building local networks to connect IoT products to each other without being a networking guru."
The products released include Argon, a WiFi node, and Boron, a cellular node with LTE, 3G, and 2G connectivity. The cheapest part is the local mesh network enabling device, the Xenon. It's available for $9 for pre-order, and will be $12 retail.
The products, Particle says, will be available in the summer.
The IoT industry is growing but already large in the U.S., with more than 3,000 companies, $125 billion in funding and $613 billion in valuation.
