I have a fully built project running on a local network and I'd like to connect it to the internet in the least painful way. I am looking for general guidance on what are the best/most up to date tools as I haven't looked into this sort of stuff for a while.
The project consist in a web interface where users enter information which gets processed by an API and a response is returned. This response is then sent to a python script running on the same machine which takes the text and sends it one character at the time to the Arduino mega which controls a series of solenoids.
A Mac mini is running the scripts and is connected to an Arduino mega which then controls a series of custom pcbs. If possible I'd like to keep the Arduino as it is, avoiding to upgrade to wifi options and only change the rest.. maybe adding a raspberry pi to act as a web server?
The final scenario is that people can connect to the web interface on their mobile devices and enter the information from anywhere in the world, rather than only locally as I am currently doing (they need to be on the same wifi network for it to work of course).
The web interface works fine when uploaded to a cloud service like heroku, my question is just how to I then get it to talk back to the arduino 'on earth'?
Hi Paul_B, apologies for the confusion. If I wasn't confused I would have not come look for help.. so well, I hope I am in the right place.
The current setup is indeed connected to the internet, as I mentioned I am using an API in the cloud so that part is all working fine.
At the moment the users can access the web interface running on the Mac mini using their phone (if on the same network) by visiting the IP address of the Mac mini + the port of the server I am running. I get that.
My question is... how do I make that work from a remote connection? How can users access this network from their 4g basically? What is the missing element I need to learn about?
(ESP would be good but I don't really want to change the Arduino part because it's all built in in a quite complex hardware build, so either running a different service on the Mac mini or adding a Pi would be a better option for me.)
