

Publish events from your Spark Core - zsupalla
http://blog.spark.io/2014/03/11/spark-publish/#

======
mtimjones
What does this have to do with the "cloud?" Does it really mean "Internet?"
The cloud is about scalable resources that can be elastically leased for short
or long periods of time. That's different than the Internet, which is a means
of communication...

~~~
sp332
The cloud is the part of the network you don't have to care about. It started
out meaning the Internet. You would draw a local network diagram, then a
little cloud, then the remote network. You didn't care about who owned all the
links in between, where they were, how many there were etc. People have been
thinking about moving things "into the cloud" well before it became a
buzzword. Moving storage into the cloud was easy enough, just make a network
request to send or retrieve data. You don't have to care where the data is, or
even who owns the servers. This is more than "the internet" because it
includes servers and storage, not just the network. Moving computation to the
cloud has been trickier - Amazon EC2 gives you a lot of flexibility but it's
not very "cloudy". Wolfram Alpha or Google Drive spreadsheets might be a
better example.

~~~
dbarlett
From _The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing_ [1], there are five essential
characteristics of cloud computing:

    
    
      * On-demand self service
      * Broad network access
      * Resource pooling
      * Rapid elasticity
      * Measured service
    

If EC2/AWS doesn't meet that definition, what does?

[1]
[http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145...](http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf)

~~~
sp332
I just mean that you have to care a little too much about where the servers
are (by region and availability zone) and of course you know who owns them :)

------
mwetzler
This is great, nice job! I work at Keen IO and we're kind of obsessed with
smart device event data. Do you think Spark users would be interested in an
API to collect & query all their Spark events? For example we have
integrations so that any Stripe or Sendgrid user can collect & query their
payment/email events. I could imagine a similar integration for Spark events.
We also work with smart devices companies. There could be some really
interesting partnership opportunities here. Thanks for sharing your post!

------
natch
Can everything be enabled without spark.io in the loop? In other words, can I
just use my own home server and get the same functionality today?

~~~
laported
From the homepage ([https://www.spark.io/](https://www.spark.io/)):

What if I don't want to connect through the Cloud?

That's okay! The Cloud is there to make the Core easier to work with, but if
you'd rather do it yourself, that's no problem. The Core lets you do your own
socket programming over TCP and UDP.

If you want the simplicity of the Cloud but you want it on your own server,
we'll be releasing an open source version of the Cloud designed for quick and
easy deployment.

~~~
natch
Thanks, so the answer is no, as long as that open source version is vaporware.

The reason I asked is that once they get purchased by, say, Google or
Facebook, their cloud services will probably get either shut down, or severely
constrained. I'm not interested in sinking resources into a platform based on
question marks.

~~~
middleca
(full disclaimer: I work at Spark, and am personally responsible for the local
cloud)

We will definitely be releasing this, we consider it a promise we made to our
Kickstarter backers.

~~~
iampims
How can we help?

~~~
middleca
Thank you for asking, much appreciated. :)

We'll probably do a small beta as we get the local cloud ready for release to
make sure things are easy to use and work as expected. Since it'll be open
source, I'm hoping the beta group can help find bugs and even send in pull
requests if there are pieces they want added. The beta signup thread is here
at the moment: [https://community.spark.io/t/where-is-the-source-code-for-
th...](https://community.spark.io/t/where-is-the-source-code-for-the-
cloud/1381/15)

Thanks, David

------
pbhjpbhj
I'm looking for a wifi ingress monitor (ideally it would take a picture rather
than be a simple sensor) - any suggestions.

Also, re the spark:

"No need to ever plug the Core into your computer" vs. "Power it over USB"

Edit: scratch that, [https://www.spark.io/#](https://www.spark.io/#) has
details of a "battery shield" with a LiPo - an idea of the battery life when
running the OP's sensor application would be nice though?

~~~
Hortinstein
are you talking about "ingress" the google game? You are probably talking
about physical security but if not, I would love to hear more about what this
monitor would do for you to monitor the game

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Sorry, I meant the boring one. Presumably in the Google one the app provides
all the monitoring you need.

------
rpedela
For me, the most interesting thing was HTML server-sent events which I had
never heard of before. Thanks!

