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:
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An integration with IFTTT to make it easy to connect Spark with other web services
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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