I haven't seen an announcement, but the store returns a "404", Adafruit says "discontinued", clicking on the Blog returns "Error establishing a database connection".
It looks like it's shutting down but I haven't seen any messages. It would help those of us who have invested time and effort in programming this device to know as soon as possible if we need to move to other embedded solutions.
Thanks,
It sure looks like it - I have a few of these and really liked the design but decided not to use them on a project because of lack of support.
I'd like to see if the owners would go open source so we can continue to use them.
I guess I'm surprised that there wasn't even an announcement. I've invested a ton of time in coding on this platform. You can't blame people if a business isn't going well, but you would hope that they would at least recognize the support they had,
If they had been public and asked for donations we might have even been able to help them out.
I'm a bit sad to see what looks like the end of the Esquilo Air. I have three of them. Two have been in constant operation for some time monitoring things in my house. The third has moved around in different functions. It ran a neopixel Christmas tree ornament that I could control from my phone for a few weeks. Not a demanding application, but one that was very easy to implement.
I really liked the fact that the interface through the web looked the same if the board was sitting next to me or was accessed remotely over the web. However, the Nest server was unreliable. It would go offline sometimes for days until the manager of the site was notified. That should not have been necessary.
The community was always small, at least in terms of the amount of interaction on the site. I was always hoping to see things catch fire, but they never did.
The store was also unreliable. Not always working right. A quick way to fail is to not be there for willing customers. There was an announcement on December 17 about the store being shut down because of slow activity. The announcement didn't say if manufacturing and distribution would continue. Mouser 737 for sale as of this writing. The boards are available, but perhaps the support will not be. More information from Patrick and Scott would be nice.
We have been unable to work on the Air for a while since our attention has been focused on IoT consulting. At the end of the day, we have to pay our bills. Even though we think the Air is a great product that can save developers a tremendous amount of time, the Maker market has turned into a race to the bottom where cost is king and people don't value their time much. For Makers, it's hard to convince them to spend $40 to save many hours of work versus spending $5 on an ESP8266 or $10 on a Pi W that takes days of tinkering to get working.
Having said that, the Air is not dead since there is plenty of inventory at Mouser and we'll keep the web portal up. We are actively moving the cloud source and tunneling code to GitHub to allow people to set up their own private portals if they so choose.
We appreciate and thank everyone for their support.
Scott,
Perfectly understandable; no one would expect to continue a business that wasn't viable.
You're right about a race to the bottom, but I have to say, the Esquilo has about the right mix of capability and cost. I chose it because I was tired of trying to create nice working Web UIs on other embedded devices (too little memory, a poor TCP stack, etc).
2 questions going forward:
1) When Mouser runs out will you guys supply them with more?
2) What are the chances of open sourcing the OS, or at least making the parts that aren't proprietary a community project.
Rick
Rick,
1) At current sales rates, Mouser should have enough for a couple of years. We also have a smaller number in inventory which we can make available if they run out. It's always possible to make more if demand is there.
2) Our intent was always to make everything open source that we could. The OS is a little tricky with the core MQX being open source but restrictive in distribution. If I can find a couple of days of free time, I want to compile the core OS as a library and link it with our core engine which we can then open source and have people modify at whim.
-Scott
I understand that your time is at a premium. I'm sure that I speak for everyone when I thank you for a great device and look forward to being able to hack it even more.
Rick
Thanks Scott for letting us know. I sure do understand how hard it is to run a business and compete, especially electronics where things come out of China and else where at super cheap prices.
Though once I started using the Esquilo I saw how much it was worth in saving me time in areas where I didn't want to spend it coding. The ease of use and built in web server, WiFi and everything else has allowed me to get some projects done that I probably never would have using the Arduino. I doubt I could do it alone with the Arduino and probably had to put together a Raspberry Pi and Arduino to make it happen. Much longer time spent on multiple platforms to get it all to work 
I'm sad that it didn't work out for you guys but very thankful you created it. I've recommended it every chance I get to people about how great it is.
I have another project I'm working on using the Esquilo and I'll be glad to share it when done.
Thanks,
Jeffery
Scott, now that esquilo is "Not Secure" through Google browser due to expired certificate is Git Hub the new way to access via the nest? Local access is good but nest access is great. How can I setup these esquilos to access remotely fro now on?
I updated the cert, so Nest access should be up again.
Sorry for the long delay. When I initially installed the cert a while back, some other problems had to be debugged and I just now got around to it. We are really busy with consulting projects.
Fair warning: We plan to keep the Nest going for a few more months, but may take it down after that.
Thanks for your patience.
Hi Scott, I hope things are going good for you.
Have you had time to make the OS a library and do the linking with with your core engine?
I looked on Github and all I saw was the Boot code and Nest tunnel.
I sure could use this as I'm still having issues with the web server getting 500 errors. I've changed routers used different routers. At this point I wish it had a cable plugin lol. Also the memory jumping up and down I have no clue. One day it will go the whole day and be fine then others I'm having to restart it a couple times a day.
Switched to other Esquilo boards I have too.
Thanks,
Jeffery
I'm sad too. I dumped my Arduinos as soon as did my first Esquilo project. Haven't looked back since. I LOVE IoT. I have Esquilo integrated with Hunter, ELK, Insteon and Universal Devices and am loving it. I certainly hope that more folks become aware of Esquilo. I'm surprised that it's not the most popular IoT Maker product out there. I will continue developing apps with it as long possible. (Maybe things will pick back up). A hearty thanks and kudos to you, Scott. A great product!