Hardware product teams
Skip a year of platform building and ship the device, not the cloud.
Custom IoT Devices
Spark
A unified IoT platform for custom devices
Embedded firmware, secure connectivity, cloud APIs and fleet operations under one roof.
- In production with paying customers
- Built and operated by NerdHerd
- Modular adoption, no big bang migration
- Hardware support ESP32 · STM32 · RPi · Linux
- Updates Signed OTA with rollback
- Edge AI TinyML · computer vision
- Operations Fleet console included
At a glance
What it is, who it's for, why it matters.
Since 2001, Project Spark has been NerdHerd's flagship initiative for designing, building and operating custom IoT devices that power real world innovation. From smart sensors and consumer gadgets to complex industrial equipment, Spark provides a single, unified software platform that seamlessly connects hardware with the cloud an ecosystem where devices communicate reliably, data flows securely and businesses scale without technical limitations.
The problem we're solving
Connecting one device is straightforward; operating thousands reliably, securely and economically is hard. Teams need embedded firmware, secure connectivity, cloud APIs and fleet operations to work as one without fragile glue code holding it all together.
Our approach
Spark brings reference firmware, an open connectivity layer, a complete cloud platform and developer tooling together so you can ship hardware fast and run it reliably at scale. mTLS, certificate rotation, signed OTA with rollback and audit trails come standard.
Who it's for
Built for teams ready to commit.
If any of these sound like you, the conversation starts well.
Industrial & energy operators
OPC UA, Modbus and CAN connectors plug into the same fleet console as everything else.
Smart product brands
White label firmware framework, BLE/Wi Fi onboarding and consumer grade reliability.
Why teams choose Spark
The reasons clients keep coming back.
One platform, fleet to firmware
No fragile glue code between embedded, cloud and apps. Spark owns the contract.
Security solved before you ship
mTLS, signed OTA, certificate rotation and audit trails come standard, not as a v2.
Edge intelligence built in
TinyML and computer vision options without re platforming or re architecting later.
Faster first product to market
Reference firmware, SDKs and proven playbooks compress months off the schedule.
Capabilities
What's inside Spark.
Modules and capabilities the team has shipped, hardened and is actively running for customers.
Embedded & Edge
Reference firmware for ESP32, STM32, Raspberry Pi and embedded Linux, with drivers and edge AI options including TinyML and computer vision.
Connectivity
MQTT, HTTP and CoAP transports with adapters for Modbus, CAN, OPC UA, BACnet, BLE, Zigbee and LoRaWAN.
Cloud Platform
Device registry, digital twin model, rules engine, workflows, data pipelines and operational dashboards.
Security
mTLS, certificate rotation, RBAC, signed OTA firmware with rollback and full audit trails.
Developer Tools
SDKs in C/C++, Python and JS/TS, CI/CD pipelines and simulators so teams move fast without breaking devices.
Built in AI
On device and cloud side AI for analytics and prediction so fleets get smarter as they grow.
Architecture & technology
The foundations under the hood.
Engineered for the long term the same patterns we lean on across every NerdHerd product.
Designed for change
Modular boundaries, versioned APIs and event streams so adding the next module never means rewriting the last one.
Secure by default
Encryption in transit and at rest, role based access control, audit trails and the operational tooling to prove it.
Observable everywhere
Logs, metrics, traces and SLOs unified across services so the on call engineer always knows what's happening.
Built for scale
Horizontal scale where it matters, sensible defaults where it doesn't, and a tested upgrade path for every component.
Technology in this product
- ESP32
- STM32
- Raspberry Pi
- Linux
- MQTT
- CoAP
- OPC UA
- BLE
- LoRaWAN
- mTLS
- TinyML
Ready to take Spark for a spin?
Pick the path that fits a tailored demo, a written brief, or a no commitment chat with the engineers behind the product.