I thought this was going to be about the Spark big data framework.
Me too, is this going to be a trademark dispute?
Introducing the Photon
41–50 of 100 posts
Re: Introducing the Photon
#42This looks really, really interesting. It also seems like they're thinking a lot about tooling, which I appreciate - there's a lot of stuff out there right now, I assume the true differentiator will be in the tooling.
On that note, there's a weird "don't go back" loop at https://www.spark.io/signup.
Re: Introducing the Photon
#43I know nothing about IOT.
Is this revolutionary? It does look awesome.
Re: Introducing the Photon
#44I know nothing about IOT.
Is this revolutionary? It does look awesome.
Re: Introducing the Photon
#45As a wifi -> GPIO board, this seems to be similar to the Electric Imp, but better since it doesn't use their misguided SD card form-factor or their blink-up nonsense. They also have a web-based ide, as well as a downloadable ide. I've not tried either of those out, but the downloadable IDE (though no Linux support) means I can use the same version control tools (ie git) to manage it, which is a huge win over Electric…
Interesting, I generally have a fairly positive opinion of the Imp. In particular the integration with Squirrel means that much more complex things can be done, more easily, and without touching the running hardware. The Spark (Core) on the other hand is much like an Arduino in that you have it in your presence to code its behavior, and then release it to the wild. Slightly different target apps, hugely different use…
Electric Imp is trying to patent (something around) using a light and a photo diode for communication. That's not a good sign, but enough about that, the Photon (assuming they actually ship) and its price point are much more interesting to me as a hobbyist. They also have schematics and gerber files for their hardware which is more than I can say for Electric Imp.
> In particular the integration with Squirrel means that much more complex things can be done, more easily, and without touching the running hardware. The Spark (Core) on the other hand is much like an Arduino
Thanks for the clarification, I've never tried Spark before, though I will once mine arrives. :)
How much of the Imp's advantage here is due to features of Squirrel the language itself, and how much is due to their 'cloudification' of the ecosystem?
Re: Introducing the Photon
#46Seems dangerously close to SparkFun ( https://sparkfun.com ) trademark and space. I had to look hard to figure out it wasn't a sparkfun product.
The core has been around for a while. Don't think there will be any issue at this point.
Re: Introducing the Photon
#47I know nothing about IOT. Is this revolutionary? It does look awesome.
The IoT revolution is inherently price conscious. It's not that any of this stuff is new, it's that I can buy a device cheap enough to consider adding wifi to everything, including a temperature sensor on my toaster, to show me temperature graphs for the perfect toast.
It could be done 10 years ago, but spending $200 to internet-enable my toaster is ridiculous, but for $25 ($20 + a temperature sensor), it's a fun and silly weekend project.
Spark themselves make the Core, which is $40, which is the same ecosystem, and also wifi shields for Arduino have existed for a while, though they aren't as cheap, and on the larger side, Raspberry Pi's have USB, which means you can just plug in a USB dongle.
So I say yes, for $20 to go from wifi -> breadboard, this is revolutionary.
Re: Introducing the Photon
#48I just pre-ordered! This looks fantastic for what I'm trying to do; reading temperatures of barbecues and smokers via wifi. I already have a working prototype using a Raspberry Pi, but of course I needed to add a USB wifi dongle and a sturdy case, as well as a beefy power supply to keep it all going. This will drastically reduce my overhead!
I can't wait!
Re: Introducing the Photon
#49Spark seems very cool, but I think what worries me as a product builder is any gaurentees that the cloud service will be around in a couple years. Certainly not suggesting that it won't be, just that if I build a product with this, I will want my own version of the cloud as an open source project that I can license or something.
Re: Introducing the Photon
#50I know nothing about IOT. Is this revolutionary? It does look awesome.
$19 for a wifi board that actually does stuff is pretty cool. maybe not totally revolutionary, but definitely worthy of mention.