McThings are a collection of devices and software that can be used to measure and control anything and connect to the cloud. The main device is a measure and control board, called a McModule, which is a tiny low-power device that communicates wirelessly to the cloud through a McRouter. McModules are designed to be very small, consume minimal power and therefore run for years on a coin cell.
Connecting to the cloud is not mandatory, connecting on IP will be available (api directly to the mcthings Wifi router) and there will no need to poll the device
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/20 ... -and-contrdid not know the about the existents of MQTT. This look like it is made for McThings, but I haven't seen it much in the embedded world. That could be because my main experience is with PAN's like BLE and ANT. I would like to implement it as a standard because that is better on the long term. Anyway what ever solution we choose it will not be polling.
I wouldn't worry about the BLE range. We have designed the BLE with a rather large antenna which should get a good range. If it is a real problem you can always install a second McRouter.