Particle, Digi, and the XBee That Started It All   

On Tuesday, Particle announced its acquisition by Digi — the very creators of the XBee — representing a full circle moment for its founder Zach Supalla.

“One of my core beliefs when I started Particle,” said Zach, “was that the maker movement and professional engineering are part of the same continuum, and that we could build a business serving both by making tools that are easy to use for rapid prototyping and hardened for industrial-grade products. We’ve proven that vision, and I’m excited to keep pushing it forward as Particle and Digi come together.”  

Founded nearly forty years ago, Digi has been there since the beginning of robust, maker-accessible wireless technology. That’s why last week’s announcement feels less like an exit for Particle and more like a homecoming. (See press release: Particle is being acquired by Digi—the very creators of the XBee.)

The Origins of Particle.io

Makers have an idea for maybe a smart device, maybe a weather station, maybe an interactive art installation or a device to open their garage door. You know what you want to build, but before you can even get started, there’s a wall of frustration. The vision is clear, but the path to building it is shrouded in the fog of RF protocols, antenna designs, and silicon NDAs. In 2012, that was the reality for Particle founder Zach Supalla.

Back then, the Arduino Wi-Fi shield was hefty and expensive. Those wonderful ESP chips we all love didn’t yet exist. The key to the kingdom of connected devices was owned by a handful of companies with billion-dollar balance sheets.

But then Zach discovered his keys: An XBee radio from Digi, and a book. Not just any book, an O’Reilly book. Building Wireless Sensor Networks by Rob Faludi.

This book, together with easy-to-use, industrial-grade XBee module opened the wireless kingdom and laid down a path connecting the maker mentality of “we can figure this out” with the commercial-grade capabilities to actually make it happen for Zach. It showed that given the right toolkit – high-quality, well-documented technology – curiosity and passion were enough.

Fast forward through Zach’s journey from that XBee and that O’Reilly book on his way to a working prototype and you’ll arrive at Particle. He started in 2013 (as Spark) with a simple mission forged directly from that struggle every maker had faced: Give creators the fastest path to building connected devices. Zach announced the name change in 2015 to Particle at MakerCon.

One of the projects we covered in 2015 was using the Particle Core to build a garage door opener that could be controlled from your cellphone. Here is a link to that project by Tyler Winegarner.

Today, over 250,000 developers have built with Particle, creating thousands of products. Minds passionate about technology were liberated to solve real problems and build things. Smart hot tubs! Connected lobster boats! Preventing methane leaks! Optimizing vineyards across wine country.

In little over a decade, microcontrollers are more powerful, connectivity is ubiquitous, and more data to capture. But the stack has grown heavier, more complex. The dream of a truly connected physical world is still hindered by complexity, much like it was in 2012. There’s still more work to do and we expect that Particle will have even more resources to help tackle these problems.

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