Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
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Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#2Congrats to the Spark team. Sad to see the Twin Cities lose another IoT startup, but I hope this positions them in the best possible way for success. Welcome to San Francisco!
Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#3Well deserved. Their chip is practically the only chip that works and can be easily integrated into arduino boards.
Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#4Can we stop naming things Spark already? There are
- these guys
Even worse, they're all high-quality projects. I can process data from my Spark devices on my Spark cluster and serve the results via Spark.
Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#5Well deserved. Their chip is practically the only chip that works and can be easily integrated into arduino boards.
Can you explain in more detail how well it works with Arduino? Could I take 3 arduino components and 3 spark components and have them integrate to do something useful?
Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#6Well deserved. Their chip is practically the only chip that works and can be easily integrated into arduino boards.
They don't make a chip. They use a CC3000 from TI -- which costs about $10 -- and provide a thing wrapper around TI's own provided driver.
You can take the same CC3000 from TI -- around $11 in low volume -- put it on your board and write your software with their driver.
They basically make a good dev board but for anyone wanting to make anything in a volume beyond 1K they'd use the TI module directly. You don't put a dev board in an end product.
I fail to see how their business is going to scale beyond this.
Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#7Well deserved. Their chip is practically the only chip that works and can be easily integrated into arduino boards.
The Spark Core works as a standalone microcontroller (like an Arduino) and a WiFi connection (quite unlike an Arduino).
All you need is Spark.
Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#8Well deserved. Their chip is practically the only chip that works and can be easily integrated into arduino boards.
They don't make a chip. They use a CC3000 from TI -- which costs about $10 -- and provide a thing wrapper around TI's own provided driver. You can take the same CC3000 from TI -- around $11 in low volume -- put it on your board and write your software with their driver. They basically make a good dev board but for anyone wanting to make anything in a volume beyond 1K they'd use the TI module directly. You don't put a…
The main product isn't the board -- CC3000+STM32 -- but rather the glorious and inscrutable cloud service that goes with it. The board designs are even being given away for free, it's OSHW.
Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#9Well deserved. Their chip is practically the only chip that works and can be easily integrated into arduino boards.
Can you explain in more detail how well it works with Arduino? Could I take 3 arduino components and 3 spark components and have them integrate to do something useful?
No. The spark dev kit includes an STM32F microcontroller. You can think of this as kinda like your Arduino. You can write programs for it, but you'd have to use their online IDE I think since Arduino native doesn't support STM32F.
It is basically an Arduino dev kit w/ the WiFi module integrated. If you want to use an existing Arduino shield you'd have to buy their Shield Shield which you can plug your spark core into and then plug in the other Arduino shield.
Re: Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't make a chip. They use a CC3000 from TI -- which costs about $10 -- and provide a thing wrapper around TI's own provided driver. You can take the same CC3000 from TI -- around $11 in low volume -- put it on your board and write your software with their driver. They basically make a good dev board but for anyone wanting to make anything in a volume beyond 1K they'd use the TI module directly. You don't put a…
The main product isn't the board -- CC3000+STM32 -- but rather the glorious and inscrutable cloud service that goes with it. The board designs are even being given away for free, it's OSHW.
Their cloud software is also open sourced, and based on IEFT CoAp[1]. I see this being useful for a newbie maker, but for product shipping in any volume you'd integrate the CC3K directly ($11 vs $39) and you'd host the cloud server yourself, or pay them a nominal fee.
I am not seeing a cloud "operating system". Maybe I'm missing something??
But most of the magic is the cloud app that each device maker writes that does the heavy lifting, and that's pure web service; i.e. if it's X o'clock send command to turn on the sprinklers, unless it is raining in the user's zip code.