Hi fellows, you have helped many times, and this time I am having faith in your expertise again.
I want to sketch the next generation of the setup I am providing to customers. When relevant, I am delivering the first and second prototype of new products that are used for biology research or agricultural monitoring, if the product is successful someone else is taking over to mature and scale it.
Gadgeteer has been great for that, combining with other china-modules where relevant.
But the needs now has grown into remote management using phone and browser (mobile or wifi networking), frequent release of new logic to the boards and more sophisticated algorithms running locally (image recognition or pattern recognition with many sensors).
I have looked at the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone based boards (including the new GHI offerings) which seems very meaningful, and I guess the linux based offerings will be my favorite. I have also re-considered the click boards and the amazing MikroBus.Net teams driver repository.
But there is a lot of unclear facts on the table, the most important questions being:
- Software complexity is high now, is there any remote-management platforms or concepts to easily upload some control-logic and create remote management features, monitoring and status.
- Is it possible to have systems online 24/7 using cellular networking and still being able to drive it on battery and solar power?
- What are the competing standards for connectors to modules, like click but maybe others?
Thanks for all input, and feedback.