Is my use case a good fit for Meteor?

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I tried Meteor when it first came out in 2012. I liked what I saw then, but worked for a RoR shop at the time and could not easily jump ship.

I’m back again now and can control my own destiny. My current project has a number of moving parts. IoT devices that collect data, a central user web app that manages accounts and associated uploaded IoT data, a mobile app that acts as a remote control for the IoT device, a mobile app that duplicates what the web app does, and then finally Virtual and Augmented reality clients that can grab data from an API provided via the main web app. Only the software that runs on the IoT device has been written and to some extent finalised, everything else I have kind of works but needs to be re-written from scratch.

I was going to use Django or Flask + frontend for the web app portion of my project. But I’m building the whole platform in a modular/microservices kind of way and so I’m actually not tied to Python for the other parts of the project.

So my immediate need is to build the multiuser web app that manages data and images that get pulled from the IoT devices.

This IoT hardware device is one that I have designed and built myself. It has a Flask (python) app running on it with a simple API for getting data out of the device and into ‘the cloud’. This will not change much. Also, I currently control operation of the device with a simple CLI based client that interacts with the device’s API too. This CLI client can be pip installed on any computer with internet access. Later this CLI will need to be replaced with a more user-friendly ‘remote-control’ mobile app and possibly a voice client (e.g. Alexa) using something like flask-ask. Sorry for all the detail, but I’m trying to get across the level of complexity and the differing non-web client apps I will need across my platform.

So the web app part of my platform will need to suck up the user data that gets generated on the devices themselves, by pulling data from the Flask api. The users will then have lots of other stuff they can do to manipulate and publish that data from within the web app. As data comes in from the device I’d like users to be able to see it appear in the web app in real-time. Hence why I’m looking at ‘reactive’ frameworks.

So I decided to research some of the ‘new-hotness’ frameworks like React and React Native. Whilst researching, I thought I had better check back in on Meteor again and see if it would be a good fit for some parts of my infrastructure. From what I’d seen in 2012 it seemed like a good fit for the web app portion at least. I also remember reading something about mobile app support a year or so ago.

So, on the face of it, I still like what I see with Meteor. It appeals most. But this thread has me a little worried and wondering where things are heading. Meteor 1.0, Meteor N + React, Vue.js + Asteroid, Apollo vs DDP?!?!! I’m scratching my head a little, but think I’ve caught up to the state of play.

Also, I am concerned by a lot of the negative sounding, perhaps warranted, posts I’m reading here. And this kind of rings true for me too:

That said, given my disparate needs, it sounds like Apollo could actually be a really good thing for me given that only part of my requirement is for a web app. What do you guys think? Is MDG and its suite of evolving products the right place for me to be looking?

Also, out of interest. Could I use Apollo with some parts of this project to get data out of my web app and into the UE VR games engine - https://github.com/getnamo/socketio-client-ue4…?

Thaks for any insight you guys can provide. Also, it would be great to hear something more substantial from MDG ‘The Company’ regarding ongoing support for Meteor. I really want to believe :slight_smile:

The above is pretty much an exact duplicate of a comment I made here:

I should have really created a new post anyway, as my comment only really partly related to the OP in the thread I posted it in. Apologies for the crosspost, but it wasn’t getting much love at the bottom of that very long thread.

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In your case of a quite data intensive application Apollo sounds like a really good fit. I would, in this case, not go for the standard Meteor way with Mongo and live query. I built some apps which are about the idea you have and a stronger data layer will certainly make things easier.

For building a quick web app Meteor sounds like the right choice. The things you want are very doable, you get a free accounts setup to start with etc.

Though I would not make one big application. I think something like this:

1. IoT device -> connects to an app -> which stores data in database (or in a queue)
2. Optional: Separate app which handles data logic like aggregating.
3. Meteor web app -> Reads from the same database, maybe the optional aggregated version.

For the connection back to the IoT devices I don’t have enough info. Maybe you can group that in 1 but maybe you want a separate app for that.

That way you can scale out 1, 2 or 3 independently. Also it will make a quite clear distinction between the different responsibilities. You can start by just hard-connecting to the databases around. If you are growing and your interfaces become clear you can build a real API in between them for even better separation of concerns.

For example, let’s start with just a Meteor app as frontend. Build it and you have a working product. If you then want to add say an Alexa interface, a native app or something else you could build an improved api on 2 which they all can connect to.

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Yes, your use case is suitable for meteor platform.

4

don’t dig out old threads

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