thanks Tom and Dan, that is exactly the kind of feedback i was looking for. i suspected that the PI would be the more appealing choice, and its good to know that there is no SSH’ing into the arduino version and that the update process requires uploading a new sketch.
i absolutely LOVE the idea of being able to hook this up to an api like thingspeak, also its interesting to consider a logging as a service approach rather than storing them on the card. Great feedback, thanks again all!