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Sorry, spark.io is down and I'm not sure what it is: A dev-board? Why not use an RPi instead of an arduino for something like this? costs ~ 25-35 USD (depends on model) + a WiFi dongle and you can write code in Ruby/Python?!

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Spark core is a low power ARM Cortex M3-based board with WiFi onboard. Very neat.

I can give you several good reasons why it is more useful to do this with a Spark core (or an Arduino), but the most important to me is that learning how to program very constrained hardware platforms is useful.

A similar product that has been around for a little longer is electricimp (http://www.electricimp.com). I've done a couple of little projects with it at home, but is has also been used in several consumer products already.

I can probably do that on a bifferboard[1]. I own one that it's out of use now, but still I'd so so much more potential on a RPi.

Anyway it's good to have choices! I'd probably grab a 'spark' since I can write code in ruby, comes very handy! :-)

[1] https://sites.google.com/site/bifferboard/

Actually it's not down, just needs a www (the link on the site points to https://spark.io, which doesn't resolve, but https://www.spark.io works fine)

Thanks for pointing that out, I tried following the author's link and assumed it had gotten the HN hug.

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