Looking to dip your toes into the IoT realm without hitting too many technical speed bumps? So were we, until we picked up some parts that were a little too advanced for our hobby. After some research into other solutions on Adafruit, The Spark Core stood out to pair with our other parts to get our sensors talking to the internet.

The best way to get started with any embedded project is to try to solve a small problem you have, no matter how minor, to keep you on track. Our problem was seeing people not knowing if a bathroom was in use or not and react with a quick experiment on giving people a heads up from their computers or seats.

This project will show you how to share sensor data through the Spark Core API, wire up your hardware, and dive you into JavaScript. The wiring and firmware are very simple and the web programming isn’t too intense; we had this up and running within two weeks.

The Team

Chris and Michael began working together in 2007 at a web hosting company and quickly became friends when their skills aligned. Countless client projects later, they strive for creating their own tools outside of the nine to five to exert creativity

What we're building today is quite simple, but highly effective in making a change in your environment. With a few simple parts and some web development chops, you can get this up and running in a couple weeks.