Cayenne vs Blynk

Can you elaborate on a high level, the differences between Cayenne and Blynk?

Could you give the points on which Cayenne scores?

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High level - Blynk more complicated more suitable for those who want to write code for functions. if you use the basic functions its fine but if you want more out of it without creating code etc then its not for you. I used it for a while to a point where it was better than Cayenne but now Cayenne is out performing Blynk. Cayenne still needs some development but its great!

Some points:

Blynk - Small user interface difficult to sometimes see screen based on dark colours , lost connectivity to Pi too often. Good for the basics.

Cayenne scores on many levels: Simple to use, great for scheduling triggers and events , don’t have to use cron jobs on the Pi, great device monitoring and status notifications for buttons - you know when something has happend from the console, etc…Still waiting for landscape orientation for handheld devices and code behind widgets to run scripts from the pi, but the team is aware of this…

Hope this brief description helps.

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A few main highlights:

  • Triggers (aka rules engine). To my knowledge, Blynk does not provide a simple way to create triggers (e.g. if something happens on Device A, trigger an event on Device B). Cayenne provides a very easy triggers / rules engine
  • Scheduling. To my knowledge Blynk does not provide scheduling (e.g. turn on a lamp at 6AM). Cayenne provides scheduling that even works when the Pi is not connected to the Internet
  • Raspberry Pi set up is significantly faster with Cayenne because it provides a codeless setup from the mobile apps. A person can literally power up a new Raspberry Pi. Plug it in to the Ethernet, plug into power and the Pi is automatically detected and set up, ready to add sensors, ready to create triggers, scheduling in less than 10 minutes.
  • Cayenne provides a web dashboard plus native mobile apps; Blynk does not have a web dashboard
  • Blynk supports Arduino; Cayenne does not - but will soon, along with an API to bring in any device type

I hope this helps.

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For this you can download Rotation Locker from google play, I have it on a tablet with cayenne app running and it works. Just a bypass until official release.

Regards

@electronicsguy

Amol,
Although you have been around for a while, I noticed this is your first post. So, please allow me to say Welcome to the Cayenne community!

Sorry, this will be a response from a very low level; me.

Differences:
Blynk - code
Cayenne - no code

I learned a long time ago (FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC) that code is not my thing. Hardware on the other hand I very much enjoy. If I plug this into that, and then something happens, I’m happy! I’m well aware that none of this happens without code, I just don’t do code.

Cayenne has enabled and encouraged me to assemble sensors, actuators, and processors, together and have them generate information and do things that interest me. Is it imperative that I know that it is 0.69°C in my backyard right now? Probably not. Could I have purchased a consumer indoor/outdoor thermometer and achieved the same outcome? Probably.

I guess the bottom line is that in the past I started my computer day looking at this C:\>, today I’m presented with a GUI that greatly enhances my UX. Cayenne is the drag and drop GUI that greatly enhances my IoT experience.

Again Amol, welcome,

Ian

@electronicsguy
I use both, so I must say I disagree with people here. Loving Cayenne, but trying to be objective.

For me it’s the opposite: Cayenne is great for beginners, while Blynk is definitely much more flexible and allows a lot more. They might not have the triggers, which I personally love on Cayenne, however coding is still super simple. I don’t mind putting 3 lines of code to push data from hardware to my own cloud or writing a simple IF statement. For basic operations, like switching GPIOs you don’t have to code on Blynk - same as Cayenne, it works out of the box.

Web dashboard is definitely a huge benefit for Cayenne as for me.
Blynk seems to have no plans for that.

Cayenne works with RPi only,
Blynk works with all the hardware I know and use + supports any connection type

They do have scheduling and real-time clock. They call it Timer Widget

I don’t know if Cayenne team has plans on ā€œexporting appsā€, but this is what Blynk does really well. My wife has a clone of my project set up which she can only use, but can’t modify, which is really nice.

The last point:
Cayenne is not open-source (or at least I can’t find info on that) - correct me if I’m wrong
Blynk cloud and libs are open-source. I’m the kind of guy who likes keeping his data for himself :wink:

I think that these products are just different tools, where you choose one which is more suitable for a task.

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@peter.bee

Absolutely concur!
There are many options out there (thank goodness!), and I find that Cayenne is the best fit for my situation.

As a good friend of mine says often- ā€œNot better, just differentā€ - Sal Glasser

Also, welcome to the group and thank you for your input,

Ian

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Hello everyone and thank you for all your inputs. I want to do some simple projects with my Raspberry Pi and some sensors for temperature, humidity, motion sensing. I am comfortable coding in C and Python. I did hook-up a single temperature sensor to my Blynk project and got some readings. I’ll work on setting up Cayenne over the weekend and see how it goes. The web dashboard certainly seems useful!

Ian, do you have any project schematics that you’re willing to share?

Amol,

Sure! I don’t have a lot of my own, but I will share. What devices do you have?

Most all, if not all of the devices supported by Cayenne are documented in separate tutorials here-

https://cayenne.mydevices.com/cayenne/tutorial/index

-Ian

@Ian I have a Raspberry Pi B+, an esp8266 ESP-01, ESP-12, some temperature and humidity sensors and an infrared sensor.

Amol,
Although I have a couple 8266’s in the form an Adafruit Huzzah break out, I haven’t programmed either one, and since Cayenne isn’t quite ready, I may hold off a bit on those. As far as temp sensors go, if they’re DS18B20’s, they are without question the easiest sensor to install on Cayenne since it auto detects and installs them without intervention. I’m going to guess that temperature and humidity sensors are DHT11/22’s which aren’t supported by Cayenne yet.

Here is a wiring diagram for a pair of DS18B20’s and a BMP085/180.

Hope this helps,

-Ian

@electronicsguy, @adlardb, @demoboard, @helder-rodrigues, @Ian, @peter.bee
I’ve been using Blynk in a dozen of my projects, and I see many benefits of Blynk platform:

  • Open-source Cloud - you can install it on your PC or Raspberry and have an independent environment. This is crucial for my security.
  • Very good hardware support! I can switch my product from one platform to another, even on later stages of prototyping - for example I switched several projects from WiFi to Bluetooth.
  • GSM, Bluetooth Low Energy and Direct WiFi support, MQTT, HTTP API, even LabView adapters
  • Active helpful community and responsive developers - just check their forum: http://community.blynk.cc/
    +They add new features based on community request.
  • I was able to get Cloud OTA working with my ESP8266 and Local Cloud - I can’t imagine how to do that with Cayenne at the moment… (see first point).
  • …
  • Also, Cayenne claims to be the first drag-and-drop IoT builder. But that’s simply not true, Blynk for example is 1.5 years on the market (at least) + there were IoT builders before (I know, as I used them :wink: ).

Cayenne pros:

  • A bit simpler to run on hardware for the first time.
  • Web - based UI is available
  • Free? - (Blynk can also be used for free)
  • ???

BTW, it actually appears that Cayenne is somehow using Blynk as it’s engine.
Just check the Cayenne library: https://github.com/myDevicesIoT/Cayenne-Arduino-Library - and see that it’s actually a Blynk library renamed to Cayenne :wink:

What do you think?

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You have valid points there, but Cayenne isn’t looking to be a Blynk clone, just another solution that stands out from the rest.

Cayenne doesn’t claim to be the first IoT builder. In fact, the Raspberry Pi side is run on a platform called WebIOPi which is also an IoT builder. The main page simply says ā€œThe world’s first drag-and-drop project builderā€.

Cayenne does use Blynk for it’s Arduino devices, however anything named Cayenne is a Cayenne library. If you look through the files you will see files from Blynk with Blynk in their name.

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Yes you’re right! Didn’t want to tell that Cayenne is a clone.
But Blynk is (and always was) also drag-and-drop project builder! :wink:

Also thanks for pointing to WebIOPi, I’ll take a look!

It was suspicious we received such an intense post, so after we noticed this user has never activated a device on Cayenne we did further investigation on this user account. It is certain this poster is affiliated with Blynk. We won’t call the person out in this post. We embrace all other platforms and we would never flame another company, person, or platform. We respectfully request this individual refrain from posting anything further.

@peter.bee If you have any issues, please email our CEO directly or message him on LinkedIn since it appears you are both connected. This post will be deleted.

I think this post has run out of energy :wink:

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It looks like you can officially create any projects for free with Blynk, if you use Private Cloud option (install cloud component on your RPi, for example)!

Using it for 3 days already - server response is blazing fast!