Why a listing?
IoT is a very rich world in terms of technologies, protocols and communications. It is difficult to have a clear view about the devices compatibility.
OpenMQTTGateway compatible web site lists the compatible devices, boards, and parts with the gateway. Helping the users in their IoT research when looking for components that have adequate technology protocol, and communication.
Why replacing the previous Google sheet ?
As the list of the compatible devices, boards, and parts with OpenMQTTGateway is growing, the previous google sheet was more and more limited in terms of filtering capabilities and user navigation. So replacing it with a dedicated web site is the next step in the gateway evolution. Added to that the product management system of the web site enables us to easily manage attributes and device’s characteristics. You can now find on each device the published attributes so as to have a clear view of its advertising capabilities.
Despite the efforts being done for having accurate information on the web site, you may find errors or mistakes, in this case, please send a message through the contact form with the issues found.
Why using affiliated links?
One of the big challenges of Open Source software is to capture the value brought to other parties. They may be the end-users for their own usage or manufacturers who sell hardware compatible with Open Source Software ( voluntarily or not).
Indeed the work behind OpenMQTTGateway represents hundreds of hours and maintaining the project cost time and money. The time spent on development, documentation, answering questions, tools maintenance, tests, communication, and the cost of devices purchasing for integration or tests, servers, domains, tools.
Behind OpenMQTTGateway there is also people developing libraries, tools, components.
To sum-up we have software bringing value, we have people contributing to the project and its dependencies, we have money spent but there is no link between the value produced and the contributions achieved.
There is several possibilities to link the contributions with the added value:
- Sponsoring
- Paid support
- Paid addons
- Advertisements
In OpenMQTTGateway case and due to its positioning on the hardware ecosystem it is interesting to use another model called “affiliation”.
Affiliation means that when you click on a merchant link on an affiliate web site, the merchant will give compensation to the web site if you buy something now or in the following days. This compensation represents several percent of the bought product price depending on merchant fixed criteria.
This principle doesn’t affect the price you are going to pay at the merchant web site but will reward the effort put into the project.
Are all links affiliated?
No, not all links are affiliated, the goal of OpenMQTTGateway is among others to convert old device to smart devices, so you will find products on the web site with no link to a merchant.
You may also find products with link without affiliation, just because they are compatible with the gateway and this way you will be sure to buy the compatible reference.