Short answer or executive summary: You should not!
Longer answer:
VSCP is developed by one man. He is very old. Actually old guys like him can die any day. Just like that. Rule. Never trust a system developed by one old man. Microsoft, Google, IBM have many young men and woman on there teams and they will be there forever. Just like Ashton Tate and Altavista actually did… hmmm… or did’t they…
VSCP has no budget. No nothing. Not a single cent. There are plenty of other IoT/m2m frameworks that have a budget. And we all know what people can do with a budget. Right. Rule: Choose an IoT framework with a budget because every project needs one. We all know that. At least we should all know that.
VSCP have just few users. Ten or so? Less. Rule: Go for a system with many users. Users can help each other and also test a system so it gets better and better. Some users of some systems even contribute code. VSCP users does not do that. They usually rewrite code that is there because they don’t like the way it’s formatted or something like that. But not a big problem. As they are so few.
VSCP is just 2.5K flash and tens of ram implemented in a node. What can actually be done in 2.5K of code? Print “Hello World”? Rule: Real systems use 32M of ram and five times that of flash . At least.
VSCP consist of so many lines of code. Close to a million lines? Or more? Rule: Small is beautiful. That is source. The opposite s true for deployed code.
VSCP have so damn much documentation. Countless pages. Written by someone that is not naive in English. It’s a hell to read. And to understand. Rule: And page with documentation is enough. Always.
The VSCP developer never help the government to plant backdoors in the code. We all know that the big companies of course help the government when they ask for help. After all NSA is there for our security. Also for non Americans.
The bloody code is free. Free as a free bottle of beer. Rule: There is not such a thing as a free lunch.
VSCP has been continuously been developed for 16 years. Well who is crazy enough to pursue such a project. Rule: Never enter a project developed by crazy people. Especially if they are old and just one member of the team. If you join that crazy person probably know who you are and may come after you with an ax. Google, Microsoft and IBM does not even have a support email so they will never notice you enter so you are safe even if they also go as crazy and support the same system for sixteen years.
You get answers to you questions. So stupid. Often within a few hours. If you find a bug it sometimes is also fixed in a short time. Rule: Never trust a developer that respond to support requests.
VSCP never wins prices. Well of course it does not. It takes more than 15 seconds to understand what it is. Rule: Only use systems that win prices.
And a lot more. Of course there are more. VSCP is just shit. Plain shit. And will never be anything else than shit. Rule: You should not use shit.
If you decide to go for VSCP anyway, well, you are plain crazy and probably should see a doctor before it gets worse! But you should probably start here if you do.
2 replies on “Why choose #VSCP as your #IoT/#m2m framework?”
I must say I’m a little confused by this article. Have you decided that VSCP isn’t worth the effort for anybody? If there are good alternatives, what are the alternatives that should be looked into.
Hi Russel,
actually I think VSCP & Friends is well worth looking into and use. Of course I do. I would not continue to work with it if I did not.I just want to share a little of the frustration a small development company feel in a world full of empty barrels making a lot of noise.
I would say it is worth doing work in VSCP also while waiting for the “big thing” to come as VSCP will abstract the world and easily connect to the “big thing” when it comes. But will VSCP be “the big thing”? Probably not. So in that respect it may be worth looking at what the bigger companies, the ones with the budgets, do. Google, Brillo, Weave, Alljoyn are all good bets for that.
But actually I have been waiting for the “big thing” to emerge in fifteen years now and I haven’t seen it yet. Not even close.