Reduce 'Data Operations' to Maintain Free Data Tier

[ajw685]

Hey there,

I was looking through my emails and noticed a nastygram from Particle; they are changing the structure of their data offerings and the 'free' tier is limited to 100,000 'data operations' per month. I checked my usage and between two touchlamps with slightly modified code, I'm using about 57,000 operations per day just for a few touches each day. 720,000 data operations per month is $99/mo.

100,000 operations per month brings the resolution of operations down to under an average of 2 per minute.

This isn't really an issue but more of an enhancement request. Maybe we can add some code to limit the instantaneous publish and recieve from the particles; or reduce the string size communicating across Particle's servers.

I'm going to keep digging into how the particles communicate to eachother and try to come up with some ideas on how to compress the usage. Maybe my usage is astronomical for some reason?

E1: looks like each press is 6 'data operations'. Not sure why i'm racking up 57k per day.

[swdunning]

@ajw685 @pblesi
Hey Aaron! Were you able to figure out anything in regards to this? I have 5 that I've been working on for about a year now and just as I was getting ready to give them to my mom and nephews I start getting emails from Particle saying I'm over my data allotment for the month. I wish they'd grandfather it in for anyone using for personal use. I emailed them and they just pointed me to the forums and emailed a few links to try and figure it out. I haven't had any luck, was hoping maybe you did?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[ajw685]

Hi Scott, Take a look at the PERIODIC_UPDATE_TIME variable for a quick fix. Maybe set it to 120 or 240 or so instead of 5. I haven't tried it yet but will at some point. I think the code for the communication portion could be rewritten (not saying that it's bad) to accommodate more of a push system rather than constantly listening and aligning state.

…

On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 10:29 PM Scott Dunning ***@***.***> wrote: @ajw685 <https://github.com/ajw685> @pblesi <https://github.com/pblesi> Hey Aaron! Were you able to figure out anything in regards to this? I have 5 that I've been working on for about a year now and just as I was getting ready to give them to my mom and nephews I start getting emails from Particle saying I'm over my data allotment for the month. I wish they'd grandfather it in for anyone using for personal use. I emailed them and they just pointed me to the forums and emailed a few links to try and figure it out. I haven't had any luck, was hoping maybe you did? Any help is greatly appreciated! — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#9 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAIWEPLJG6FT4YLGUQQNNK3UNRS2VANCNFSM5DH2AFXA> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>.

[pblesi]

I have added a commit to the master that updates this field and significantly reduces the number of messages that are sent: 4771203

The broadcast part of the lights is really just a safe guard against failures with propagating messages. Generally, touches from one light should be pushed to all other lights nearly instantaneously.

[swdunning]

You are the best Patrick!!!

I added push buttons to mine, I thought that the buttons would be more durable against my young nephews haha. I couldn't get them to communicate via the manual push button code and I send you a few messages with no luck (no worries I understand youre busy and this is not a job for you), for some reason one of the forks ended up working decently well with the push button and I decided to just go with that. Unless of course you can help me figure out why the manual push button code wouldn't not communicate with each other?? ;-)