The more hoops I jump through to overcome the roadblocks I am encountering within the Windows and/or Android environment the more I regret buying these things.
On the surface (as it is advertised) we have a very nice package with excellent hardware and what seems to be a beautiful wireless programming interface... until you want to do something other than what is in the included examples or onboard libraries...
Then the honeymoon is over... (insert Debbie Downer audio)
You can indeed connect and program via the Android app... woohoo!! Very slick interface, however you cannot compile locally so anything too exotic and you run into library errors that FAIL your build. After much research and trial and error, I find the cloud compiler is crap due to embedded library limitations. Again (insert Debbie Downer Audio) Sooo close...
Ok... well, onto Windows 10 so I can compile locally... that should be easy enough... HOLY SHNIKEYS!! are you kidding me? How difficult does this have to be!?!? Load how many separate software components manually then ensure your Python path is set then... really... I know we are all bleeding edge here and have the knowledge to do this... but why is this soooo kluged together... And seriously... you could not get your OTA updater to work with the onboard Bluetooth in windows 10... come on, even Microsoft figured that out.
Ok so I have jumped through all the friggin hoops and completed all the steps, dotting every lower case j and crossing every t... and now I learn WHAT!?!? Oh ya.. sorry that awesome hardware you just bought is crippled to its knees... there is no true bean to bean communication... that is still to come... That whole 400meter spec is a bunch of future crap that may or may not ever happen... let's just wait 3 years and see what happens. Oh, you can broadcast some crap into the air and hope something picks it up, but unless you're the ghost of Steve Jobs you can't actually use the Bluetooth as it was intended. There is also no clean way to pair to another programmable device that does support Central/Master mode... If we could even pair the bean to an Arduino UNO/Mega with an HC05 or HC10 module that might suffice... but noooo... sorry that would be too convenient... and yet another slam to the non Mac user. No serial monitor!?!? Oh just use the Command line Interface and watch the stream of characters run forever... oh you want to send data to the bean as well... just kill that window and open another and send that data you want... oh you want to see a response... too bad...
As you can tell by now I am less than impressed by the lack of support for basic fundamental features that should be available in a device like this. This is quite frankly a feature set we get from much less refined and way less expensive modules.
Sure OTA programming is nice and if you're a Mac OSX user it seems kinda cool on the surface, but at what expense? The fact that there is no direct way to compile and upload code in a Windows environment coupled with the lack of a true serial monitor and really any kind of actual bean to bean or bean to arduino communication makes the bean+ not much more than a very expensive multicolor rechargeable flashlight.
With nearly a million dollars coming in to drive development the basic functionality should already be available...
I really hope the team at Punch can pull this outta the recycle bin and make it as powerful and as useful as it was designed to be.
