The streaming selection is like the 99 cent section of Blockbuster. You've probably seen the movie before, but it's what's available.
The Blue Ray / DVD selection is like the "New Releases" section - newer movies that aren't streaming yet.
I own a company that does hardware and firmware, mostly for projects in the IoT space. We've had clients hire us to connect all sorts of dumb stuff to the internet. Many times you're using a chip that has a framework or stack that already exists; be it BLE, or Wi-Fi, or even Sub-1GHz (my personal favorite, it's the Denny's of wireless protocols). These frameworks are usually written in C. So while it's possible to incorporate them into a C++ project, usually it's just not worth the time or risk; it's easier just to leave it in C.
The key to writing in C is to make it as human readable as possible. Code is written once, but read many times. So don't just use shitty variable names like "count"; use something that makes sense like associatedDevicesCount. That being said, for tight loops, i is just fine.
It's also interesting how little customers care about security, even when our team brings it up. We're always trying to strike a balance. More security generally means more time during manufacturing (loading keys, etc.) or making the product harder to use. With manufacturing time going for (in US) about $1 per minute, we want to keep things moving. And clients hate dealing with customer support calls because the user can't get his miniblind controller to talk to his iPhone.
C is also very popular for lonely devices - things that have to sit out there and just transmit information periodically, and are difficult to reset if the firmware goes haywire. I'd bet that 99% of iBeacons are implemented in C. Certainly the ones we've made are in C.
All that being said, I'd like to try C++ on a new project; if nothing else for fun.
While it's not a program that an everyday user would use, the application DragonFrame is the work of a single developer. This application is used on most of the major stop motion animation movies (Boxtrolls, Shaun the Sheep, Frankenweenie, etc.).
I think that one-developer applications require a very, very good (aka "rock star") developer who enjoys working on one project for a long time.
Consider the three purposes that listening to music on headphones provides:
1. noise masking - it prevents you from being distracted from Sally Sales.
2. virtual barrier - wearing headphones means that someone knows that they are interrupting you to ask a question. Functions as a virtual door, per se.
3. motivation - the right type of music can make you work more effectively.
You might want to find out what your bosses' objection really is - he might not like the fact that he has to interrupt his programmers to ask them a question.
I am self-employed and work in my own office. I've found that listening to music helps a lot while coding but can be distracting when writing a report. For those of you who find listening to music distracting but still need the noise masking aspect, I recommend trying out any type of instrumental (ie. no vocals) music - it doesn't activate that part of our brain.
This is exactly why we waited until solutions were available from multiple vendors, namely Freescale (formerly known as Motorola) and Chipcon. However, we like the CC solution better, as its radio is better than Freescale's.
Zigbee can have ~65,000 devices on one network. The power consumption of Zigbee is very low, about 20mA @ 0dB. This doesn't sound like much output power, but we've measured 160' between two chipcon zigbee development boards in an office environment (through walls and everything)
One of Zigbee's strength is its low data rate - makes for a very robust low power network. Ideal for light switches and thermostats, etc.
Zigbee products won't be available for another few months. The Alliance (http://www.zigbee.org/ just released the 1.0 spec and the software guys like Figure8Wireless (http://www.f8w.com/) won't be finished with the 1.0 stack until the end of this quarter, at the soonest.
Actually, Chipcon http://www.chipcon.com/is selling RFIC's NOW (I have a stack of 20 right in front of me) and will have single chip solutions later this year, not 2 years from now.
In our office we tested for range using two of the Chipcon boards. We measured about 40m range, through various walls and offices and whatnot. That was using el cheapo PCB trace antennas. If you put on chip antennas (like what most BT devices use) then you could probably get 50m+. Outdoors, either of these options can do 100m+, one guy said they got 400m between devices.
Zigbee adds some really cool stuff, including mesh networking, dynamic mesh creation and maintenance, security, and a very cool application profile tool.
Who says that you need to get certified? Maybe you do if you want to advertise your product as "zigbee compatible" or whatever, but if you don't care then there's no reason to test. We're using the zigbee stuff from Chipcon and we aren't a member of the Zigbee Alliance. Oh, BTW, it costs $9500 to become a member of the Alliance, not $7500.
For the Zigbee chip companies that have zigbee stacks on the market now, if you want to use their stack in an end product, you pay a license fee per device, about $0.50 or so. Of course once the spec is publicly available for download (1Q05) then you could just write the dang thing yourself. For those of us that need to get to market soon, it's much easier just to license it for now.
Anyone interested in a Zigbee Stack project on SourceForge?
Chipcon and Motorola are both producing 2.4GHz Zigbee RFIC's now. They are fairly inexpensive, about $4.50 each in 1k qty. ZMD will be releasing 900MHz Zigbee RFIC's very soon.
Licensing the stack from one of these company's partners adds about $0.50 but of course you could always roll your own.
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The streaming selection is like the 99 cent section of Blockbuster. You've probably seen the movie before, but it's what's available. The Blue Ray / DVD selection is like the "New Releases" section - newer movies that aren't streaming yet.
I own a company that does hardware and firmware, mostly for projects in the IoT space. We've had clients hire us to connect all sorts of dumb stuff to the internet. Many times you're using a chip that has a framework or stack that already exists; be it BLE, or Wi-Fi, or even Sub-1GHz (my personal favorite, it's the Denny's of wireless protocols). These frameworks are usually written in C. So while it's possible to incorporate them into a C++ project, usually it's just not worth the time or risk; it's easier just to leave it in C. The key to writing in C is to make it as human readable as possible. Code is written once, but read many times. So don't just use shitty variable names like "count"; use something that makes sense like associatedDevicesCount. That being said, for tight loops, i is just fine. It's also interesting how little customers care about security, even when our team brings it up. We're always trying to strike a balance. More security generally means more time during manufacturing (loading keys, etc.) or making the product harder to use. With manufacturing time going for (in US) about $1 per minute, we want to keep things moving. And clients hate dealing with customer support calls because the user can't get his miniblind controller to talk to his iPhone. C is also very popular for lonely devices - things that have to sit out there and just transmit information periodically, and are difficult to reset if the firmware goes haywire. I'd bet that 99% of iBeacons are implemented in C. Certainly the ones we've made are in C. All that being said, I'd like to try C++ on a new project; if nothing else for fun.
While it's not a program that an everyday user would use, the application DragonFrame is the work of a single developer. This application is used on most of the major stop motion animation movies (Boxtrolls, Shaun the Sheep, Frankenweenie, etc.). I think that one-developer applications require a very, very good (aka "rock star") developer who enjoys working on one project for a long time.
Consider the three purposes that listening to music on headphones provides: 1. noise masking - it prevents you from being distracted from Sally Sales. 2. virtual barrier - wearing headphones means that someone knows that they are interrupting you to ask a question. Functions as a virtual door, per se. 3. motivation - the right type of music can make you work more effectively. You might want to find out what your bosses' objection really is - he might not like the fact that he has to interrupt his programmers to ask them a question. I am self-employed and work in my own office. I've found that listening to music helps a lot while coding but can be distracting when writing a report. For those of you who find listening to music distracting but still need the noise masking aspect, I recommend trying out any type of instrumental (ie. no vocals) music - it doesn't activate that part of our brain.
This is exactly why we waited until solutions were available from multiple vendors, namely Freescale (formerly known as Motorola) and Chipcon. However, we like the CC solution better, as its radio is better than Freescale's.
Zigbee can have ~65,000 devices on one network. The power consumption of Zigbee is very low, about 20mA @ 0dB. This doesn't sound like much output power, but we've measured 160' between two chipcon zigbee development boards in an office environment (through walls and everything)
One of Zigbee's strength is its low data rate - makes for a very robust low power network. Ideal for light switches and thermostats, etc.
Zigbee products won't be available for another few months. The Alliance (http://www.zigbee.org/ just released the 1.0 spec and the software guys like Figure8Wireless (http://www.f8w.com/) won't be finished with the 1.0 stack until the end of this quarter, at the soonest.
Actually, Chipcon http://www.chipcon.com/is selling RFIC's NOW (I have a stack of 20 right in front of me) and will have single chip solutions later this year, not 2 years from now.
In our office we tested for range using two of the Chipcon boards. We measured about 40m range, through various walls and offices and whatnot. That was using el cheapo PCB trace antennas. If you put on chip antennas (like what most BT devices use) then you could probably get 50m+. Outdoors, either of these options can do 100m+, one guy said they got 400m between devices.
Zigbee adds some really cool stuff, including mesh networking, dynamic mesh creation and maintenance, security, and a very cool application profile tool.
Who says that you need to get certified? Maybe you do if you want to advertise your product as "zigbee compatible" or whatever, but if you don't care then there's no reason to test. We're using the zigbee stuff from Chipcon and we aren't a member of the Zigbee Alliance. Oh, BTW, it costs $9500 to become a member of the Alliance, not $7500.
Already done. The Chipcon Zigbee Development kit comes with one. The Motorola DK probably does too. You can also buy one from FTE.
For the Zigbee chip companies that have zigbee stacks on the market now, if you want to use their stack in an end product, you pay a license fee per device, about $0.50 or so. Of course once the spec is publicly available for download (1Q05) then you could just write the dang thing yourself. For those of us that need to get to market soon, it's much easier just to license it for now.
Anyone interested in a Zigbee Stack project on SourceForge?
Zigbee does have security - 128bit AES. I think it uses CBC but I'm not sure. The Chipcon CC2420 has an onboard crypto engine.
Chipcon and Motorola are both producing 2.4GHz Zigbee RFIC's now. They are fairly inexpensive, about $4.50 each in 1k qty. ZMD will be releasing 900MHz Zigbee RFIC's very soon. Licensing the stack from one of these company's partners adds about $0.50 but of course you could always roll your own.