Thingy external connection

[Sheldon]

In order to connect an external sensor to the available pins, will we need to create our own version of the FW in order to communicate with the sensor? Or are there generic methods to communicate?

[endnode]

As there is basically infinite number of possible interfaces (on both HW and SW level) it's almost impossible to develop magic plug which will be able to communicate with any sensor. So yes, you will need to develop your own FW to work with such sensor.

[Sheldon]

Guess I am naive as well. FW, security, should be from hardware vendor, as is BLE mesh stacks, HomeKit support etc. Performance is split between vendor and custom developer both equally responsible. Performance directly affects power, assuming constant hardware, so they are linked. Just having a difficult time seeing the point of a SOC device that cannot be customized without taking the entire FW in-house and building a custom version. Handful of lines of code to read sensors, or I2C values, and send commands would solve a lot of use cases. Mesh networks should not require a hub to perform useful work, and in order to do useful work, does the device not need to be able to perform some custom work? Sigh. Right now I have a Thingy that requires an iOS device (or Android), to do anything, so a great sensor node, but what else can it do?