Introducing Blynk Energy - first paid services

My 2 cents…employ a developer/production model as others do, allow free SDK usage then charge when in production. I will gladly pay for something I have produced that is ready to use and share, but need unconstrained development time and space to be truly creative.

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In the interests of making a clear message:

You say we need to “get Energy”, I would say “load money into a pre-pay account”.

You say widgets “use Energy”, I would say they “cost $x.xx”.

You say “Energy is recycled”, I would say “money is refunded to your pre-pay account”.

You don’t talk about costs up front, I would lay out all the costs up front for all to see.

Just my opinion…

On widget removal (recycling) you get back 100% of energy;
best move you’ve made
New project doesn’t take any energy anymore
as it represented mostly with new database row , and not generate any API cals - i think - to use more resources
Recycling enabled for old projects
i have to pay you a lot for that many dashboards :grin:
All Blynkers get +2000 of energy to compensate bugs in previous release
nice gift to all of us

As much as I would like this service to stay free. I absolutely agree with your decision and support you, it’s extremely hard to find sustainable business model for startup. I’m facing currently same issue however I’ve got it mostly solved. Having so many users on cloud is just exhausting for Blynk and they have to pay for aws or whatever they use. Everyone needs to know that young startups often prioritize customer acquisition over costs and they actually have to spend money on every single one of you at the beginning. Now it’s time for Blynk to make profit or at least break even. All the best guys and good luck!

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i should have loaded up my projects with graphs before updating the app!!! would have recycled heaps!

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Hi, When will we receive the redeeming instructions?

Thanks

@nvddussen: we have sent all the emails with codes and instructions. Please check your inbox. If not - please pm me your details.

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Hello ,
I’m only amateur in electronics and computer .I tested the application I created. so has every faith that I modified and removes widget I have to pay. I’ll find another aplication to play.
I’m not a profesional .payer for testing I do not find fair
cordially
pedro

No. You don’t. All energy is returned back on removal.

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ok, thanks for the quick response.

I love this application. I developed alot of small electronic arrangements with schools.

Merci

Pedro

Just wanted to say I couldn’t see anything about Blynk energy in the Google apps store
It’s all getting a bit too complicated for me
Hope it doesn’t end up killing Blynk because it’s a good app
I think I will stand back and watch for a while before committing to another project
I don’t seem to be able to share my project now so that won’t encourage any new uptake
Not moaning its up to you how you go about it
Just a bit confused and put off using the app for future

Does removing the whole project recycle the 1000 energy spent on “shared access”? Seems not coz i just lost 2000 energy because of doing that.

@newrad “sharing” energy is not recycled, sorry. This is because we allow absolutely free access for all users who use/get “sharing”.

Hi,
Now the IOS update is out, I tried to use my QR code to redeem my reward but it failed, something about it being invalid or already used. My local server (0.15.2) spewed out something about a redeem error.
I’m sure you’ll get around to fixing this eventually, but it has started me wondering how your energy system will work with local servers, or more specifically where does control of the energy reside.
Is energy tied to the application on a handset, so I’ll need to organise energy on my iPhone and my iPad?
Is it tied to your online servers/accounts somehow, so I’ll have to go online, buy energy and then go back to my local server?
Will my family that is sharing my account on my local server, also use my energy or will they need their own?

Could you give out some more details on how the energy is implemented please?

I’m not complaining, how you want to charge people is up to you, I’m just trying to figure out the best way I can work with your system in my environment…

Thanks
Nick

I ran out of Energy on my local server, so I created an account on the Blynk servers just to redeem my kickstarter reward, this worked and I now have 100,000 energy. Thanks

I then log back in to my local server and it is all gone.

I guess that means that the Energy must be linked to the Blynk servers and probably the user account, it doesn’t carry other to local servers.

The only work around I’ve found is to create a new account on the local server, which gives 2000 Energy, but as the IOS app is charging 500 for new projects and only returning 80% on recycling, this quickly dwindles away and you need to create a new account again. Swapping accounts to swap projects is no fun either.

Dmitriy, you did say that you would be able to run on a local server that disconnected from the internet. How will this be achieved?

@NickM

  1. It’s a bug. UI shows that new project costs 500, but if you check your balance - you’ll see that it didn’t change
  2. same for recycling. You see that 80% charged, but if you check balance - you see that it’s was’t
  3. same for project deletion

UI was fixed already and it’ll be available in next iOS release.

Thanks,

And I just checked, I can recycle my old projects to get extra Energy, even though it says they don’t give Energy.

So I should be able to roll my local server back a version, use the old app to create heaps of dummy projects, restore everything and then recycle the dummy projects :slight_smile:.

Heres the thing
I spent a month working on a project which monitors temperature in 10 locations , the humidity and the state of a beehive , whether it is being moved or fallen over etc
There are two graphs of the history data for the temperatures

So I tried to share a link on a forum for other beekeepers to view the project because they may well want to do the same thing
Except they cant view the link or scan the QR code because Blynk tells them they don’t have enough energy
Now they are hardly likely to want to buy energy just to view the historical data from my project
Likewise they are not likely to become subscribers to Blynk unless they can see a completed project they want to copy
Catch 22
Anyway I’m happy enough with my working project but can’t do much to encourage others to follow my lead
Blynk is the loser here because I can’t help promote interest in the Blynk project under these circumstances
Sure I could take the project apart and start again but I don’t fancy that option
Is it worth blocking the sharing of these older projects wont it just lose future customers and revenue
Maybe its just me doing something wrong

You can share your project as an “app”. It will cost you 1000. Your friends will see your data. Btw, we don’t limit the number of them.

If they want to experiment with Blynk - they can register and get 2000 Energy to do that. They can try every widget with this amount.

If they want to have a clone of your project, surely they would need enough Energy for all the widgets.

Sorry Pavel I will delete Blynk and reinstall it
I didn’t want to risk just losing the project completely doing that
I don’t see an upgrade option in the Google play store
I will have another go
Many thanks