Using Spark in commercial products

The Spark team has mentioned (somewhere in these forums) that their goal is to “be there” when the internet of things becomes ubiquitous. I believe that they have the platform to do the job, and I am very excited for the future of the team!

After playing with the core for a few weeks, I never thought I would say this… but I find myself moving past the whole wireless sensor aspect and dreaming of bigger projects. I’m a bit dumbfounded as to how this happened in the space of 2 weeks, as this is something I have been attempting to achieve since first playing with a 16f877a a decade ago. Already I have made a humidor monitor, multi-sensor garden soil moisture detector network, computer case temp monitor, and a wire current sensor for my dryer… and they ALL log data and tweet at me when there’s action. Spark makes it so easy to do this stuff, it’s no longer a challenge - so I can finally get on to some bigger projects!

That said, these more complex ideas have the potential to turn into real products and I am curious as to if (or how) we would be allowed to work out a deal with Spark to use their cores as the centerpiece of a new product.

Does the team have any policy documentation on how they plan to approach commercial partnerships? What are your thoughts?

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Hi @emc2 - so glad to hear that your projects are expanding in scope and turning into marketable products!

We absolutely are planning on supporting commercial products, but we’re still iterating on the correct business model. We hope to have something official to share in a couple of months, but in the meantime, if you want to discuss in more detail, shoot me an email at zach at spark dot io and I can talk through some options.

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I can see an OEM model for purchasing modules for integration into products. What we need is an online site that allows our customers to claim their cores (product), activate, reset, etc. It should be branded to the developer (with Powered By Spark.IO, etc.) contain the products pre-built code images for over the air updates, etc. This should include downloading a branded version of the SparkCore application that manipulates the particular device.