Talking across internet

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

In the "Transistor Trouble" thread, the author describes something neat: A set-up where, if I understand things right, he sends something from an internet terminal into an IRC session. That message is received at a Windows PC connected and on and waiting in his home. That PC then sends a message to an Arduino (using a simple serial link between the two), and the Arduino does something.

Please: For the purposes of THIS thread, leave the idea that the Arduino will be a "slave", "hanging off" a big PC, connected via a serial link "set in stone"?? I KNOW there are many ways to skin these cats, but I would really like to learn more about the OTHER parts of doing things THIS WAY. In particular, I don't want (here!) to go down into the world of using an Arduino as a web server.

I have a "WAMP" server on my always-on internet connection... but it is under-used at the moment... it just serves up a static page of HTML.

What do you think, experts?.... what's the best course for me to take in trying to go further? The one with the least overhead, and the greatest general application is the one that interests me the most. I don't mind a steep early learning curve, if the work will repay me in the long run.

I'd love to learn enough so that the page my WAMP server presents to the public has a button that when clicked causes the WAMP server to send, say, "ButtonClicked" to the Arduino over the serial connection between WAMP and Arduino.

If whatever powers the above could also arrange for the following, so much the better....

Let's say that my Arduino has a temperature sensor connected to it.

Could things be arranged so that when someone "out there" on the internet asked theWAMP server to serve up a particular page of HTML, then before that page was sent, the WAMP server would send "TellMeTture" to the Arduino (over serial link), wait for answer, and incorporate answer in page served?

FOR NOW (Please?): Answers, but not on a postcard, to "what set-ups/ software, etc" could solve both of the problems above? (I'll start separate threads later for "How do I...?" after coming to a decision about the tools I want to use for solving the problems.)

Hoping this thread won't fray too much....

Tom

2

We are doing something a bit like it here http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1278347111

3

Consider putting Bitlash on the Arduino, and sending commands to it from your WAMP application via the serial port.

Bitlash is a command shell and language interpreter for Arduino. It's open source and free here: http://bitlash.net -- you can send simple commands to control IO over the serial port, and set up macros that are stored in EEPROM to do more complex functions.

Your WAMP web application programming language can open the Arduino serial port and send Bitlash commands based on web input.

Another possibility is to use the "bitty.py" python network proxy provided with Bitlash, and send commands via telnet from your web application server to whatever PC the bitty+Bitlash-enabled arduino
bitty.py is available here: http://bitlash.net/wiki/bitty.py

Good luck with your architecture quest.

-br

http://entropymouse.com

4

Thank you for the link to bitty.py, where I read...

The python program known as bitty.py is a serial port proxy. It runs on an Arduino-connected PC and makes the Arduino available over the network for connection via telnet, nc, or your favorite telnet client.

The access-from-internet serial proxy route is an interesting idea. I wasn't clear why the spec speaks of an Arduino-connected PC. I thought that that one of the points of serial proxys was that at that level, WHAT was connected via the serial link was irrelevant?

As for software to run in the Arduino to react to things and send out things, in and out over the serial link... I'm okay on that side of things, and hope they can go in other threads, if others wish to discuss them.

So... one "vote" for Python as the working environment in the PC?

Thank you!