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Not directly--with only 32kb of program space in the Arduino Uno you can just barely get a wifi stack in (see the CC3000 chip), but there's no room left for SSL or anything secure.

A better option is something like the Arduino Yun which has two processors, a small Atmel microcontroller and an Atheros system on a chip running OpenWRT linux. The linux processor can act as a bridge to let the microcontroller communicate with the internet pretty easily.

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At that point, just use a RaspberryPi unless you're specifically doing it for the challenge of it. Arduino is fun though.

Not really. There are some pretty considerable disadvantages to using the Raspberry Pi for the sorts of things the Arduino excels at. There are more, more resilient GPIO ports, there are more ADC ports, there are more PWM ports, the Yun can enumerate itself as a USB slave device, which can allow for all sorts of other cool uses, etc. Each device has pros and cons that you have to take into consideration.

What are some uses of a USB slave device?

It can be, to your computer, like any other USB device. So you can set it up to be a USB keyboard, USB joystick, USB storage device, etc. So, when you plug it in, you can have it set up that configuring the device, or getting logs, works like any other file operation, similar to how the wifly looks to a camera like just another sd card. Or have it enumerate as a usb input device, and use it to control and be controlled by a pdp 11 front panel ( http://retrocmp.com/projects/pdp-1170-panel/25-pdp-1170-cons... ). In short, it lets you tie whatever real-world interface device you've made to whatever pre-existing computing metaphor makes the most sense...or creating your own driver to let the sky be the limit.

Cool, thanks for the explanation.

There's also https://www.spark.io/

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