Results from the 2024 Blues IoT Developer Survey

Banner image credit @campaign_creators on Unsplash.

What is now becoming an annual tradition, the 2024 iteration of the Blues Developer Survey is in the books. We couldn't be happier to share the responses from our growing (and quite satisfied!) developer community.

Our cloud, product, and firmware teams use the anonymized data collected from these surveys to help guide our internal roadmaps. Those of you who went above and beyond to volunteer to be interviewed later are arguably the most important piece of the puzzle. These 1:1 customer interviews are critical for us to better understand what you are building, how you're building it, and the pain points you experience that we can address.

Let's not forget about the prize winners! We gave out Blues hardware to a few lucky survey participants. Congratulations go out to Francis Y., Justin L., and Michael E.

How did you first hear about Blues?

We always want to know where you first learned about Blues and, just like last year, most of you were referred to us from a friend/colleague (1), via a Hackster project (2), or via a search engine (3).

What first drew your interest in Blues?

After you first heard about Blues, we next like to know what specifically about our products and services actually drew you in.

The responses to this question question saw some big changes versus last year. Replacing some of the key value props of the Notecard Cellular that topped the list last year, what stood out for you this year was:

1. "I am building a prototype and just need it to work quickly"
2. "Blues enables me to use different radio access technologies in the field (e.g. Cellular, Wi-Fi, LoRa)"
3. "Notecard Cellular comes with 500MB of cellular data"

Needless to say, it's validating to hear that you are building quickly and using the right wireless RAT for your product. 👍

How likely are you to recommend Blues to your circles?

If you've never heard of a Net Promoter Score (NPS) before, it's a way to measure satisfaction or loyalty by looking at a person's likelihood of recommending a given business or product to a friend/colleague.

Here is a typical scale of scores, where anything above a 0 is considered "good":

Well, I've got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is the overall NPS score for Blues didn't get much better relative to last year. The good news is the score is STILL incredibly high, coming in hot at 64! 🔥

What are your preferred method(s) of network communication when building a new IoT solution?

You already know that Blues provides multiple options for picking the right radio access technology for your connected product. So it was nice to see narrowband cellular, Wi-Fi, and LoRa/LoRaWAN come in at 1, 2, and 3 for your preferred methods of network communications:

How important will satellite connectivity be for your product(s)?

The general response we had after our launch of Starnote was overwhelming to say the least. Case in point, we sold out of our Starnote Starter Kits... not once, but twice.

What's interesting is most of you (>70%) said satellite is likely to be a part of your connectivity plans in the future.

Scale of 0-5 with 5 being "Extremely Important"

Which Notecarrier and host are you using for your current project?

Some things never change. One of those is apparently the preferred Notecarrier and host for your connected products! While unfortunately the legend isn't visible in the image below, I assure you the top three choices were the same as last year:

1. Notecarrier A and my preferred host
2. Notecarrier F and Swan
3. Notecarrier B and my preferred host

Where do you typically learn about new products and services in the embedded and IoT spaces?

We always like to know where our developer community gets their news so we can build the right content to not only continue to engage you, but also to introduce new people to the Blues ecosystem.

To that end, it was great to see the top responses from this question were:

1. "Product tutorials and online guides"
2. "Product datasheets, whitepapers, and application notes"
3. "Webinars and other online training/workshops"
4. "YouTube (or other video/streaming content)"

Overall I'd say we handle the above mostly quite well today (but there is always room for improvement!). There is a lot more we can do with video (especially short form video to provide you with feature intros, best practices, and other tips/tricks), so keep tabs on our YouTube channel.

Speaking of which...

What are some specific blogs, social channels, podcasts, and/or newsletters you read on a regular basis?

Getting even more specific, where are you getting your information today? Here's a word cloud of the responses so you can get an idea of the most popular sources:

Please rank the following potential new Notehub features in order of interest.

We presented a handful of (somewhat vague) potential new Notehub features and then asked you to rank them in order of preference.

It's clear that you're looking for better ways to monitor the health and state of your devices deployed in the field, and even possibly to tweak Notecard settings remotely:

1. "Dashboard style views for monitoring the health of devices, events, and routes"
2. "The ability to view the state of a device, or group of devices, across multiple device attributes at a point in time"
3. "View individual Notecard settings or even alter settings via Notehub"

Wrapping Up

Thanks again to all of you who responded to our annual survey. We really do read through all of your comments and incorporate your feedback when planning our product and service roadmaps for the coming months and years.

Happy Hacking with Blues! 💙