The Photon is an open source, inexpensive, programmable, WiFi-enabled module for building connected projects and prototypes. Powered by an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller and a Broadcom WiFi chip, the Photon is just as happy plugged into a hobbyists breadboard as it is into a product rolling off of an assembly line. While the Photon--and its accompanying cloud platform--is designed as a ready-to-go foundation for product developers and manufacturers, its great for Maker projects, as youll see in this book. Youll learn how to get started with the free development tools, deploy your sketches over WiFi, and build electronic projects that take advantage of the Photons processing power, cloud platform, and input/output pins. Whats more, the Photon is backward-compatible with its predecessor, the Spark Core.