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Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
- 100k 12y agoCongrats 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!
- middleca 12y agoA lot of us are staying in the Twin Cities, and we're hiring! (https://www.spark.io/jobs https://www.spark.io/jobs), we're looking for great engineers, and we support remote work as well. :)
- vicngtor 12y agoWell deserved. Their chip is practically the only chip that works and can be easily integrated into arduino boards.
- sputknick 12y agoCan 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?
- bravo22 12y agoNo. 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.
- bravo22 12y agoThey 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.
- jenesaisdiq 12y agoThe 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.
- bravo22 12y agoTheir 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. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-core-coap-18 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-core-coap-18
- jenesaisdiq 12y agoThe OS part is that you're running the Spark firmware to manage comms and security, which talks to the Spark Cloud and makes the rest of it easy. Building the cloud app to be fast, stable, scalable, and secure from scratch is difficult, so this is a SaaS play. Plus, how are you going to manage your 100,000 devices in the field? With Spark you can even do it all with API calls. and, uh, cough I just joined Spark as well...
- jenesaisdiq 12y agoThe Spark Core works as a standalone microcontroller (like an Arduino) and a WiFi connection (quite unlike an Arduino). All you need is Spark.
- avidan 12y ago< disclosure, i run the firm that lead this series A > if you mean integrating into Arduino shields, then YES, absolutely. the beauty of Spark is that it you can program using Wiring (the same language as arduino), so a lot of the example sketchs and libraries are easily transportable. So basically, if you love an arduino shield, you can prototype using this (http://www.makershed.com/products/shield-shield http://www.makershed.com/products/shield-shield) then you port the library over to spark's cloud, and you have a wifi enabled Arduino Shield! once your prototype is where you want it, you can roll-up a version of that shield with the spark components built on the board. because the reference design of the spark core is open, its actually quite easy (assuming your shield's schematic is available). and when you are ready for production, getting the cc3000 and stm32 is as easy as throwing a rock down the street in shenzen. i could not be more excited about leading the investment in spark....and building products at home on the platform. im not just the investor, im also a member.
- fiatmoney 12y agoCan we stop naming things Spark already? There are - these guys - http://www.sparkjava.com http://www.sparkjava.com - http://spark.apache.org http://spark.apache.org 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.
- error54 12y agoDon't forget that you can show the data with Sparklines.
- zsupalla 12y agoDon't forget Autodesk's open source 3D printer platform Spark! So you can print the enclosure for your Spark devices with Spark too.
- follower 12y agoEven more so in this area with http://SparkFun.com/ http://SparkFun.com/ who had to deal with issues arising from having a name with "spark" in it: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/300 https://www.sparkfun.com/news/300
- tricky 12y agoDo these guys have any patents on their tech?
- bravo22 12y agoTheir product is open source: board design, firmware, and cloud software. The WiFi module is CC3000 from TI.
- lisper 12y agoSounds a lot like http://electricimp.com http://electricimp.com
- jasonlaramburu 12y agoIt's more expensive than imp but has a smoother wifi pairing process.
- jenesaisdiq 12y agoAnd a lot cheaper than Imp at scale- <$15 per device in hardware at scale.