What I'm disappointed is at times, the sales guy always ask questions like how much is your consumption per year and how big is your company, etc. No doubt, the Synapse products are awesome products, I just wish that they have a wider distribution network like the XBee. Embarrassed
I've never dealt with Synapse Sales. Agree 100% about wanting a wider distribution network. The arduino is the perfect platform that enabled me to learn and get running quickly. The RF Engines are sort of like that for wireless. Yes, there are things about Synapse Wireless that irk me to no end. This is not the place for that.
I strongly believe that this product can and will help out arduino users in many, but not all situations. For example, in a multi-room thermostat or other home control center, some node can be a RF engine and temp sensor and motion detector. Instead of an arduino, xbee, temp sensor, and motion detector. Yes, there are many other ways to accomplish this situation. That is a very basic use of the RF Engine.
The ability to run code on the RF engine helps me. I think it can help others too. The ability to make rpc calls to other nodes or portal make complicated things possible. Portal is software you can run on your computer. An example where I use this is a node can ask portal the current time. Portal then responds and the node sets the time in a RTC.
The code I run on portal is available at: http://jctc-electronics.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/SNAPpy/JC-portalrtc.py
The code I run on a node is available at: http://jctc-electronics.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/SNAPpy/PCF2129A.py
The important piece of that is the getPortalTime(). That will call the setRFTime function on portal. Portal will then call the writeClockTime function on the node that called it with the current time.
Although these are basic examples. I am fairly new to arduino, electronics, and wireless. IMO it is more than you can do with an xbee. Yes, you can use api mode on an xbee, but the common xbees do not allow you to run code on them.