Although many people are quite devoted to their particular development platform, there is some logic in working with others to find synergy and solve problems with the combination. Some platforms are better at some things than others, and a demonstration of this has been provided by the Carriots M2M application platform team. They have built a water-flow monitor system that feeds the consumption data to their online M2M platform with an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi.
The water flow meter sends its pulses to the Arduino who collates the data and sends it via a direct USB connection to a Raspberry Pi. From there the data is sent via http requests to the online Carriots platform for analysis or use with online applications. It's a great idea to use the Arduino for the hardware side of the solution as it lends itself to interfacing with a wide variety of hardware with minimal risk and a very low cost. For more information including the hardware and code for both boards, visit the project page. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
When adding external circuitry such as the soft switch described above to your project, and need to make it more permanent than using a solderless breadboard - consider our range of ProtoShields. From the tiny LeoStick to the Mega range, we offer a complete range for you to work with.
