"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

"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 user experience." The Core default firmware gives you an instant cloud API to access GPIO pins (r/w). You write code if you need more complex stuff (local control logic, exposing a function as a REST service, publish or subscribe of events...) And you usually flash it remotely. At work [1] we use it to build prototypes for anything that needs network connectivity (we also use Yuns, but it's a completly different paradigm as I see it). I hope the Photon is still open source as the core (hw and firmware) [1]http://www.globant.com/studios/wearables-internet-things http://www.globant.com/studios/wearables-internet-things