Good evening,
I want to create a public web server with an arduino (or similar maybe ESP) but I don't have a router to connect my board to. Any other ways to make a server accessible from all over the world?
It must be a sort of website because of compatibility with other devices. If I need to be more specific just ask.
Sure: buy a static IP from your ISP and use that.
However, it does beg the question of why you want to do that because I suspect there's a simpler way to accomplish what you are actually trying to do...
Is there a free solution? I need to create this server for my university campus but the owners do not want to grant me internet connection. The server will say how much people are present in the public spaces such as kitchen, gym and other places. In every space there will be small units that will communicate via radio ( the spaces are separated just by a thin wall) with a master. The master will need to host a "platform" so that everyone in the campus can see the real life data (we are talking about normal people, not electronics experts).
A free solution to what, exactly? It doesn't "cost" the university IT anything to give you a static IP, but there are very good reasons that they may not want to do that. And if you're their network, you're going to be subject to their rules.
Now, assuming that you are not allowed to run your own server (a pretty safe assumption given the circumstances), what people in this situation normally do is to connect to an external IoT server (Adafruit.io is free) and send the data to that server, then anyone who wants the data can connect to that server and access it easily.
However, it doesn't solve the problem that at some point, your arduino devices will need to be provided with IP addresses and given access to the network. And that's going to come from the university.
Unfortunetly I've tryed to talk to them but they absolutely don't want to host my project even if it would be useful to all students
IT people would very naturally consider your project to be a security risk, and to convince them otherwise, you need to be well prepared to describe and demonstrate what you have done to mitigate those risks.
Having that information publicly available could definitely be seen as a security risk.
You are also going to need permission to install those units, otherwise you end up with the situation where someone finds one and reports it to security or the police, people do not like being spied on.
Then there is the difficulty of exactly how do you detect how many people are present.
Is this for some course at the university? That would make a big difference.
What you describe (people counting, radio network with master data collection node, etc.) is a large and very challenging project, and several different sets of technical skills are required to implement it.
An IP address hosting a web page to report the collected results would be the simplest and final detail to implement, after everything else is implemented, fully debugged and working properly.
What have you managed to accomplish so far?
I’ve already talked with them and they will grant me permission for “counting” people. Still they don’t want me to have my page hosted on the network
I already made the nodes and accomplished the rf communication with the master. For now data are displayed on an lcd on the master node but this is not very useful (as I said IT team already gave me permission to “count” people)
If it is a university project and you are a student you might be able to persuade a local hosting company to grant you server space free of charge in order to host your web site.
I'm not at all surprised that the university won't allow external access to your proposed server, especially given that you seem to have no knowledge of the potential security risks. I suspect, but I don't know for sure, that any micro-controller based board capable of hosting a web server does not have sufficient processing power to support the necessary security software, even if such software exists for such boards.
I've actually come across this problem where an Ethernet sensor node product my employer sold couldn't support a large customer's network security and they begrudgingly had to set up a list of exceptions for our products.
The problem is that these days, even embedded network devices are being attacked, so the IT providers are understandably paranoid.
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