NEW PRODUCT: Spark + IFTTT = Internet Button

Hello Spark Friends,

We’ve been looking for ways to make it easier to get started with Spark, both on the hardware side and the software side. We’ve got two announcements today:

  • An integration with IFTTT to make it easy to connect Spark with other web services

  • The Internet Button, a Spark-powered button that you can press to do something on the internet, available on our website for $49 (including a Photon!)

The Internet Button is connected with IFTTT out of the box, so together you can build a connected product without any electronics knowledge and without writing a single line of code! Read on for more.

Activate the Spark Channel on IFTTT

###IFTTT (If This Then That) integration is live!

We’re very excited to announce the new Spark Channel on IFTTT! This is our most requested feature and will make it really easy to hook up your Spark Core or Photon to web services like Facebook, Github, and Slack, or to other connected hardware like Nest, WeMo, and littleBits.

  • Triggers and Actions: IFTTT integrates into the Spark back-end so you can fire “Triggers” when something happens on your hardware (e.g. send an email when motion is detected) and trigger “Actions” when something happens on the internet (e.g. turn on a light when there’s a new top post on Reddit).

  • Tutorials: We’ve put together a tutorial for beginners to IFTTT that walks through using the Monitor a Device status Trigger. We’ll continue to post additional tutorials throughout the week that are designed to help give you the tools to feel comfortable using Spark + IFTTT in all sorts of ways.

  • Documentation: Details on firmware requirements and answers to FAQs about the channel can be found in this new docs section.

Are you building a product with Spark? We’re hoping to make it possible to extend our IFTTT channel into a custom channel for your Spark-powered product. If you’re interested in this feature, please contact us.

###NEW PRODUCT: The Internet Button, connected with IFTTT

Introducing the Internet Button - connected with IFTTT. When you press this button, something happens on the internet. What happens, exactly? Whatever you want - you can build an IFTTT recipe to connect the Button to hundreds of web services. This $49 kit is a great way to explore hardware and start prototyping without electronics knowledge. The Button will ship with firmware on-board that hooks it up to IFTTT, but just like all our stuff, it’s totally reprogrammable and can do whatever you want!

Yep, hardware and web integration made extra easy. Some features of the Internet Button:

  • Ships with a removable Photon
  • 11 individually addressable LEDs (Neopixels!)
  • 4 directional buttons (Konami code ready*)
  • A 3-axis accelerometer
  • Ready for awesome 3D printed cases

The Internet Button will start shipping in May with our second run of Photons. Order yours today!

###Spark Community

We’ve got a lot planned for the first few months of 2015, starting out with the new IFTTT channel and Internet Button. We’re big believers in listening to our community’s feedback as we continue to enrich the Spark platform. We love and value feedback, bug reports and projects that you’re willing to share. Thanks for being part of our forum and keep your thoughts coming!

Hope you enjoy our latest announcement; there’s more great stuff coming in February, so stay tuned!

We love you all,

Zach and the Spark team

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IFTTT will be awesome, especially once we (in Tennessee anyways) start coming out of the winter months and into hectic spring weather. I work in a basement, so I have no idea if the sun is shining or if fire and brimstone are raining down. This will also be cool for monitoring gardening sensors and even setting reminders. I probably need to hook up a Spark to a really bright RGB LED to put in my garage so I remember to take out the trash or recycling before I leave for work! Now if I could only force IFTTT to force send triggers for testing!

On a side note, I noticed that you can publish events from IFTTT for cores to subscribe to. Is it possible that it uses the Javascript SDK publish event feature in some form or fashion? That would be quite handy to securely pubsub events and responses over CoAP instead of insecure HTTP calls.

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Heya @wgbartley,

Our IFTTT channel is using the API to publish events back into the cloud, we’ll be exposing this feature for users hopefully during this next sprint. :slight_smile:

Thanks,
David

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The Internet Button looks great, and I’d love to order one, but I’ve already ordered several Photons. I don’t suppose there could be an option to get just the Internet Button without the included Photon?

Great job Spark team… Wow!

I tried it, and it worked… just great!

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When I try to activate the Spark channel on IFTTT, it asks for a Spark account username & password. I’ve signed up for the community, but that’s the only Spark account to which I’ve seen any reference. I am more that the usual confused.

@rbidness the Spark account you need will be the one you use for spark.io/build when you code firmware. Hope that helps!

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So, I have to buy the Spark product? The IFTTT recipe I want to try (https://ifttt.com/recipes/244507-track-your-internet-downtime) doesn’t seem to require any additional hardware.

@rbidness Yes, our channel is all about interacting with physical things - our IFTTT channel let’s you interact with a Spark Core or Photon via IFTTT. Think of it as similar to the Misfit channel. Here is a full tutorial on that recipe: http://community.spark.io/t/beginner-tutorial-ifttt-monitor-a-device-status-trigger/9406

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@jasoncoon it’s something we’re considering for the future but for now it will definitely come with a Photon.

That doesn’t actually answer my question. If you look at the IFTTT recipe I referenced, it does not appear to REQUIRE a Spark product. Am I wrong?

As part of the recipe you have to provide your device name - “If (Device name or ID)” - this comes from your Spark device. I wrote the recipe and you definitely need a Spark product. I’d like to refrain from having a link to our store in every recipe which is why it is not blatantly referenced.

Well, now I know. I’ll definitely put the Spark product on my list.

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