OK I was directed to Blynk by a student of mine. Previously Blynk might have been free now it is not. Fine Fine
I thought it was completely free as long as you were not using the Blynk Cloud server to run the connection. If you were using something like a Raspberry Pi on your local network it was Free. Was that ever completely free? Historically? Is it not any more?
Can someone just answer was it completely free?
And what it is now?
I am willing to purchase “energy” to by more widgets for my iphone app. I don’t need that many. However I am COMPLETELY unwilling to pay ANYTHING monthly.
It seems like (NOW) I can just by energy and get more widgets on my iphone. Is that true? I don’t need other users to access my stuff. I’m just controlling things in my lab from my phone. Me only. Pet projects.
I’m not an app developer and I don’t want nor intend to sell anything. I’d like to make a weather station and monitor it with my phone. I’ll by the darn energy to make more pretty graphs on my phone. I will NOT pay anyone monthly for anything ever.
Not sure where you got your info from. You might want to go read the blynk homepage before ranting on public forums.
Blynk is free to use on both local and cloud server.
The mobile app is free… you get enough energy to start a project or two when you sign up… and there are no monthly fees.
If you still have a problem with purchasing energy to create more projects or make a very advanced project… then download the local server and give your account as much energy as you wish.
Note that when you delete a widget, your energy is returned.
Again this is all 100% free.
Blynk have a business plan where you can “white label” your own app which comes with a monthly fee… but this is only for companies that want to create a product to sell.
What a ludicrous statement to make.
Maybe your school, college or University might adopt the same policy today and you can then say goodbye to your salary. Hope you are looking forward to life as a charity worker.
For reference the word is buy not by, as in the school currently buys your services on a monthly basis.
Why is it software has to be free? Have you got any clue how much time is spent to develop the Blynk platform and how much interaction and time is consumed by actually LISTENING to the community?
Anyway, to answer your question. Local server is COMPLETELY free. It doesn’t require you to invest a single dime in software. You can give yourself as much energy as you want it’s perfectly capable to satisfy your needs for pet projects and even to teach your students.
I bet if you ask nicely the Blynk team is more than willing to participate to help you on your way educating students with some sort of discount or whatnot.
Exactly. Thanks guys, I think @jrk74 just didn’t find the information, as he is new to Blynk… And this information is spread on diferent pages of http://blynk.cc and http://blynk.io . So don’t blame him
Well, I still think the local server option is not really described well in terms of cost, and we all know you guys want to earn some cash for the hard work you do, so I understand, but maybe there is the need for a page for tinkerers to explain the difference between local and cloud services (and explain it costs money to actually run something on cloud hardware)
Thank you vhymanskyy.
I had conflicting statements from a student of mine as to the pricing structure. They had mentioned local Raspberry Pi option being free to run IoT apps through a phone, but possibly the Cloud server cost money.
So I looked on the FAQ and other sites (as you mentioned) and I saw a “new” pricing model as of 2016 Q1, so it seemed pricing had changed. So I was merely asking the question as to how things changed. I probably did not use the best words. I really like Blynk but was really concerned about the monthly fee option and didn’t know if that was part of the Q1 changes.
So thank you vhymanskyy. I am more than willing to buy energy for more widgets for the iOS app. I am a tinker for this type of thing. I have no plans for a business in it. Yes I do know that software development cost money and am more than willing to pay for it.
Again my apologies for the original strongly worded post, but I think a few of the other posters have to work on their own responses
What goes around comes around. I didn’t meant it in an offensive way, but if you start a topic like you did, you can expect these kinds of results. Again, no offense meant
Dave1829, can you can stop trolling this post and ask you parents to let you out of their basement. It’ll do you some real good. Honest. That’s you “teacher” talking.
developers are too mercantile…