Many of our customers use some great command-line and GUI tools to build connected products using the Electric Imp Platform. We think you will all be thrilled with the new technology we’re introducing today as it’s going to make your development tools more effective than ever before.
It’s called the impCentral™ API, and it’s the powerful successor to Electric Imp’s Build API.
We launched the Build API in June 2015 as a means for advanced developers to interact with the impCloud™ directly rather than through our browser-based interface. The Build API made possible a number of powerful developer tools, some from us, others from our growing developer community.
We have now completely redesigned and rewritten Build, and the result is the impCentral API, a new technology focused on eliminating the complexities of IoT and complementing your overall product strategy by enabling you to securely develop, launch, manage and scale your IoT products with the tools and applications of your choice. It offers:
- Simplified and consolidated access — the impCentral API forms a single, consistent access point for any tool, of any kind that needs to talk to the impCloud, whether for development work, production control, device management — or all three.
- Greater control and flexibility — the impCentral API embodies our advanced ‘flexible deployment’ technology that enables customers to organize devices into as many groups as their product workflow needs, thus enabling a truly revolutionary way to meet the needs of customers who are managing and connecting millions of online devices.
- Seamless integration — the impCentral API uses open standards like the JSON API specification to deliver consistent input and output for whatever task you need to perform, in a form familiar to web developers worldwide.
We’ve made the impCentral API available as a public preview. Its endpoints are accessed via the prefix preview-api.electricimp.com/v5.
First, you’ll want to check out the features the new API offers, which you can do by visiting our online documentation. We have a primer that will introduce you to the API’s new concepts, and a guide to help you quickly port your tool from the Build API. There’s also a full API reference, of course.
Existing Build API-based tools will continue to work and access the impCloud. We are committed to giving toolmakers plenty of time to port their code to the impCentral API, and the two APIs will co-exist for the time being. We will formally End of Life Build in the coming weeks once the impCentral API is feature complete, at which time we will give 90 days’ notice of the Build API’s closure. Now is the time to begin planning your porting strategy, as the Build API is no longer being updated.
The impCentral API is not yet complete, and we will continue to work on it during the public preview period. For example, collaboration facilities are next in the queue to be added. You can find a list of known issues and preview limitations here.
As you try out impCentral’s many new features, please use the Electric Imp Forum to let us know how you’re getting on, to notify us about problems you experience, and to make suggestions for future releases.
Kenny Lee,
impCentral Product Manager,
Electric Imp