Particle Gen 3 devices (Argon, Boron, and Xenon) included support for Thread Mesh, a technology for short-range (10 meter) communication. This support will be discontinued beginning in March 2020.
Date | Milestone |
---|---|
March 2020 | Last Device OS release with mesh support (1.5.x) |
April 30, 2020 | Last sale of Xenon devices1 |
June 30, 2020 | End of customer support for mesh 2 |
December 31, 2020 | Mobile apps, CLI, and cloud support for adding Xenons will be removed3 |
January 2021 | Console management of mesh network will be removed |
1 Sales of Xenons will continue until April 30, 2020, or until supplies run out, whichever comes first.
2 After June 30, 2020, support for mesh networks will only be available in the community forums.
3 Mesh networks that have already been created will continue to function after December 31, 2020, however you will not be able to add any new devices to a mesh network.
Argon, Boron, and B Series SoM devices will continue to be manufactured and sold. While you cannot use the Thread Mesh functionality after 2020, the primary network interface (Wi-Fi for Argon, cellular for Boron and B Series) will continue to be supported. BLE (Bluetooth LE) will continue to be supported as well.
After 2020 the mobile app support for creating mesh networks will be removed, so the mobile apps will always behave as if you answered "No" to the "Do you want to use this device in a mesh network" question.
Device OS 1.5.x, expected to be released in March, 2020, will be the last version to contain Thread mesh networking support. After this release, there will not be any additional mesh-specific bug fixes or upgrades to the nRF52 Thread mesh networking stack.
Later versions than 1.5.x have the ability to use a mesh network removed, and all Device OS API calls in the Mesh
object will be removed.
It is possible to continue to use 1.5.x on Argon, Boron, and Xenon devices to continue to use Thread mesh networking features, however no new cloud or device OS features will be back-ported to 1.5.x.
By this time, support for creating mesh gateways on Argon and Boron devices will be removed from the mobile apps and CLI. It also will no longer be possible to add a Xenon to a mesh network. The features to manage mesh networks ("Networks" tab) in the console will be removed as well.
An existing mesh network will continue to function, however you will not be able to add devices to it after December 31, 2020.
There is no firm date to when these grandfathered mesh networks will cease to function. We do not intend to make any changes to cause them to cease to function, but at some point a breaking cloud-related change could cause them to stop working.