Auth token and product creation

1

Hi there,

Iā€™m thinking about the ā€œauth token issueā€ in final products or products one might want to sell.
Some of this has been discussed here, but I feel ā€œsharing my projectā€ doesnā€™t really solve the issue.
Let me try to describe where I see this issue:
1- you create a product (whatever it might be) with a Blynk supported board
2- to sell it, you need your customer to setup an account in Blynk and clone your project (from the projectā€™s QR code for instance)
3- once the project is cloned in the customer device, you can ask them to provide you with the project auth token
4- When you get your hands in the customerā€™s auth token, you can flash it in the hardware you are selling them
5- they can now buy this ā€œcustomized to their phoneā€ (so to say) product, since their phone is linked to the product

This seems a bit painful since there is a back and forth between you and your customers in the sense that your customers need to create an account in blynk, clone the project, give you their auth token and then you can flash the thing (the product) and give it to them. Now that I think of it, you could create the blynk account for your customers and have them change their password to alleviate a bit the pain.

Sharing may not fix this issue since when I sell them the device, I donā€™t want to have anything to do with it. For instance, I noticed that if I share a project and I stop it in my phone, my friends/family see the project stopped.
Imagine I delete this particular project by mistake, I would need to call customer X, have him send me back the product to re-flash it with a new auth token from a new project. Ouch.

Am I missing something?
Would there be a way (an API?) of getting auth tokens for pre-provisioning projects with them in case this proves to alleviate the problem described?

thank you,
Gustavo.

2

@gusgonnet I believe pre-provisioning is available under the right circumstances and Blynk have also announced they are working to include @tzapulicaā€™s WiFi Manager within the ā€˜coreā€™ system.

3

Hi @gusgonnet,

Sharing Blynk projects wasnā€™t planned for commercial use.

Blynk for businesses is a different system and it works in another way. It inherits same components but is more tied for the use-cases you describe.

  1. Customer creates account in system
  2. Customer is walked through the wifi setup process
  3. Auth Token is sent to the device and registered in the system
  4. Device gets online and everything is all set.

If you are interested in using Blynk for a final product - please contact us at iot@blynk.cc

4

oh I didnā€™t know about Blynk for businesses, Iā€™ll take a look.
thanks!

5

It is clear for me. Thanks

6

Hello @Pavel - Iā€™m on Blynk for businesses - and I am in the process of developing my firmware. I need some help/info on accessing the customer account for the device. So if I have the device setup by the customer to post a status to another URL (e.g. Shopify API) from within the device - I need to access the user email id that I can connect to the customer account. How can I do this? (Or alternatively get an authtoken for the specific customer/device so I can access BlynkAPI from an external application to read cloud virtual pin state to perform some action).

7

@Dmitriy is the best person to ask. Also, you can email us directly, weā€™ll see what we can do.

Thanks for using Blynk for Business!