We hope to create a community around BLE devices where developers share their ideas designs with each other. Everything is open-source, of course, with lots of supporting materials, together with companion apps for both Android and iOS.
I followed the link from Location Puck Tutorial Page[1] to mbed.org page[2] which does have a "Buy Now" button, but clicking on it took me back to the vendor page where it was completely unclear how am i supposed to buy this!
I understand you have this amazing bluetooth board, that I can do wonderful magic with it. But how do I get one? Give me a straight direct link to buy this thing.
How can you possibly think that this can be called "The Raspberry Pi of Bluetooth" when even buying this looks like an impossible mission.
As I said it looks pretty cool and I congratulate you for taking it so far. I think there is a lot of work to be done to enable hobbyists/hackers to buy this device easily without jumping through numerous corporate hops.
Also if I understand it correctly, I need a special IDE to be able to hack on this device? If that is really the case, I think there should be some work to decouple the device from the IDE to increase the openness and remove any kind of vendor lock-in.
But then again, i might be completely off and this device is not what i thought it was. Good luck anyway!
[1] http://nordicsemiconductor.github.io/puck/tutorials/location...
[2] https://mbed.org/platforms/Nordic-nRF51822/
[3] https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/Bluetooth-R-low-ener...
The IDE is a webapp (!), no downloads required to get hacking. That being said, it is possible to use other tool chains, such as gcc or µVision, but we haven't focused on that in the tutorials.
I understand that as interns you may not have control over the purchase process, but a "Buy now ($XX)" button at the bottom would be a step in the right direction.
(for the curious, it appears that an nRF51822 evaluation kit costs about $/€ 80).
