Google's $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest was a smart move.

In snapping up Nest – a home automation outfit founded by one of the fathers of the iPod – the web's most dominant company now has a sexy consumer electronics division that can compete with Apple on multiple levels, and it has a ready-made way of gleaning insight into what we're doing when we're not using our computers, phones, computers, digital eyewear, or smart contacts.

>For many, the Nest acquisition is just one more way for Google to embed itself into their lives and further invade our privacy

But for many, the Nest acquisition is just one more way for Google to embed itself into their lives and further invade our privacy. And though the Nest devices are pretty, they aren't cheap.

That's why a chipmaker called Spark has published instructions for building your own open source Nest-style thermostat, a programmable, web-connected device that's controlled by you, not Google, and that costs little more than $70. It's proof that anyone can help bootstrap the Internet of Things.

You'll need some technical know-how to build the device, and even the Spark team admits it's not quite on the same level as a Nest thermostat. They designed the thing in less than a day. But Spark doesn't want to compete with Nest. It wants to show you how easy it can be to pull together a working prototype of an internet appliance in today's world. It wants to show how the rise of open source hardware is changing the world and how, ultimately, it can make us less dependent on companies like Google.

Spark started out as a consumer product company, says founder and CEO Supalla. But when its Kickstarter campaign for a web-connected lighting system failed, the team decided to focus on selling chips to other inventors instead. "We make technology to help other companies, entrepreneurs, and engineers build products," Supalla says. "There are a lot of hardware companies that are going to have to reinvent themselves as products come online."

In other words, if the Internet of Things is a gold rush, Spark is the company selling the shovels.

>In other words, if the Internet of Things is a gold rush, Spark is the company selling the shovels

The company offers an open source circuit board called Spark Core. It's similar to the Arduino, an immensely popular electronics controller board among the hardware hacking crowd. But unlike the Arduino, the Core has a built-in Wi-Fi antenna, and it's designed specifically with wireless networking applications in mind.

In many ways, it's similar to another project called Tessel. But while the Tessel is designed to handle a fair amount of processing on its own, the Core offloads processing to a computer server. This server – which you can operate on your own or host on a cloud service – crunches data, makes decisions, and then sends instructions back to the board.

According to Supalla, this lets Spark keep the price of its boards down. "The Core is designed for mass production, when you want to make 10,000 or a million or something. We've made inexpensive chips," he says. But, he adds, hobbyists can use it too – not just big companies. It lets you be your own Google.