[cstone]

This is a very hacker-unfriendly device. I wouldn't buy one.

The SDK's compilation tool doesn't invoke a compiler; it uploads your code to a service running off of http://174.129.29.50:8080.

The Arduino is fantastic because the bootloader is open-source, the hardware is open-source, and it's easy to find out full information about the hardware and pull the MCU datasheets yourself.

[brk]

How can you call it "hacker unfriendly"? The thing is designed to be hacked, that's the whole point of it.

The Arduino and this are two totally different classes of devices.

For staters, this appears to be very much about the hardware. I wouldn't expect it to be open source, just like the iPhone or Motorola Droid you can develop your own apps for doesn't have open source hardware. You don't actually have to be granted access to 100% of the codebase and hardware layout for a product just to develop a neat application around something.

I saw this and immediately thought of 5 or 6 cool uses for it so I bought one. Sure, if I was going to build some kind of a product around this, or develop an app that was going to be my retirement income, I'd want a little more information about the company and their licensing models. But for a $150 hackable gadget, this thing is one of the coolest toys I've seen in a while.

[acgourley]

I think it's a pretty good idea, but the ideal solution would be both a CAAS and the opened sourced toolchain that worked on at least one open source platform. Doing that is probably easier than releasing something cross platform like arduino, and for most people is going to be easiest to use.

[drivebyacct2]

I'd love to hear a counter to this. I was really close to buying one...

[erohead]

Hi Guys, Eric from inPulse here. We're trying to make it as easy as possible for people to develop for inPulse. That's why we've built a cloudcompile service. No messing with DLLs, drivers and other annoying parts of embedded coding.

I think we've succeeded! In our beta testing, users were able to go from downloading the SDK zip to loading their first app on inPulse within 5-8 minutes. I think that's pretty impressive for a startup hardware biz.

If you'd like to setup the arm-gcc toolchain and compile your own apps, absolutely no problem! We'll have instructions online shortly. If you need them faster, just email [e-mail]

[cstone]

It's certainly easy to use, as long as the server remains up. But do I still have full control over the code that I upload to you, or does it count as "user-generated content" in http://www.getinpulse.com/terms/? What privacy guarantees do you make regarding the code that I upload? (Hopefully very little; it is transmitted in the clear, after all..)

We live in a world where device vendors (even small ones) routinely use technical means to thwart hackers and other tinkerers. Often, this is done under the guise of usability or security (sometimes with some justification, even). Plenty of people don't mind trading away some control for stability or ease-of-use.

This is a forum for hackers, and you just called your device "hackable". I'm saying that it's not, currently; it's a black box with an SDK that does cloud compilation. You don't document that fact anywhere or provide an ready alternative, and there's no information about what's underneath your API, either OS or hardware.

[dedward]

This is extremely important - the claim to user-generated content is either boilerplate and wasn't intended to apply to actual software, or it is specifically intended to apply to the uploaded code due to the cloud-compile service.

The question has been asked a couple times here - is there an answer?

[erohead]

Boilerplate. We'll get the lawyers on it and get it fixed.

[erohead]

You've made some very good points. We'll strive to improve over time, and you comments/questions here will help guide us. Any and all comments are welcomed to [e-mail]

I encourage you to try out the hardware, throw it on your wrist and wait for the amazed looks from passersby. It's quite awesome having a net-connected terminal (I pair my inPulse with my Blackberry) right on your wrist.

[qc_ok]

Your marketing speech just creeped me out, FYI.

[jokermatt999]

For technical sites like Hacker News (and to some extent, reddit), it seems like marketing speech is actually more likely to turn off potential buyers than attract them. See the IE9 AMA debacle on reddit, for example. We're hackers here, and blunt truth tends to be valued more than softer wording.

[erohead]

Sorry, my bad. :) Just trying to encourage people to try it out. It really does feel cool to have your watch vibrate when you get an important email.

[mbreese]

I've never heard of a cloud compile service, but I think in this case, it's a good idea. Especially since not many people have experience with cross-compiling.

One of the things that make Arduino so popular is the ease of use in getting code a) to compile and b) get uploaded to the device. If this works via a service, then so be it.

But, I would like to see instructions for setting up a local amr-gcc toolchain, just to be complete.

[tesseract]

The other cloud compile service that I'm aware of is provided by NXP for one of their microcontroller dev boards. http://mbed.org/

[JonnieCache]

Those mbed things are completely brilliant.

"ARM Cortex-M3 Core running at 96MHz, 512KB FLASH, 64KB RAM and lots of interfaces including Ethernet, USB Device and Host, CAN, SPI, I2C and other I/O."

<200mA, $59

I want one, but I already have an arduino thats been laying around unused and unloved for some time :(

[lepht]

Appcelerator Titanium, a relatively prominent open source alternative to Adobe AIR, does cross-platform app compilation on a 'cloud compilation' service:

http://www.appcelerator.com/products/