Hi Newbie here!
I have read here and Googled enough to get me almost where I want to go. I am using the NKC ethernet shield and I can get online, ping, pull NTP time and do almost what I want.
Whats next is getting my info into a web page. I can run the weduino and other webserver examples just fine. The problem is I dont know where to start when trying to mod the examples.
I want to go ahead and try my own sketches, but admittedly, I know no programming- PHP, flash, html, etc. I want to learn one, but Im not sure which one would be best to try first.
Any suggestions of where to start? At this point, I dont even know which language I am messing with when trying to change the examples in the ethernet library ( hello world, webserver, etc).
I'd adivse PHP. It's easier to hack around in than ASP. It's also cheaper to get PHP hosting than ASP hosting
You'll probably want a database too, mysql integrates well with PHP.
You can pass variables to a PHP page in the URL, eg example.com/index.php?variable=value so it's handy for the arduino. I've found it easier to make the arduino poll a web page for data than to try pass the data directly to the arduino.
There are plenty of free resources online, but if you want a book then Sam's Teach Yourself Apache, PHP & MySQL in 24 Hours is really good. It talks you through installing apache (a web server), PHP and MySQL on your own computer and then teaches you how to use it. It's well laid out and you can dip into it, so you won't need to read anything like all of it to have enough know-how to do what you want (from the webserver side).
Getting the arduino to poll a web page is pretty easy. If you want code have a look at my site - the code is available for my physical counter, which involves the arduino checking a web page to see whether it should click a hit or not. The web page delivers a simple Y or N depending on what the local count and web count are.
Basically, it asks for a page from my site then ignores the first eight lines (which are all header stuff) and the next thing it gets is a Y or N.
My arduino twitter project uses exactly the same technique but gets more of a response from the web page in question.
edit: As for the arduino, it's based on C. I'm learning by a mix of the example code I find here on the forums, in the playground wiki and the reference page.
Thanks for the quick answer! I dont know how complicated this project will get, at this point all I want is the webpage to pull some temps and times off the Arduino and show them on the page. Eventually, sending me a twitter, email or SMS of temps might be of value, but thats for when I have run out of things to do...
Im going to go google some PHP stuff and see what kind of trouble I can find.
Thanks again! Keep the suggestions flowing if anyone has other options!
You can just have the arduino produce a simple web page to return the data desired. The below example controls an LED and returns the status of the LED.
Thank you Zoomcat. I made that work... Now to play with formatting the page.
Im still curious about Cowjams way. I went ahead and loaded up a php webserver on my UNraid box and made a sample page. Now I just need to figure out how to ask the Arduino for the data. Im kind of thinking a widget type box an a page that updates every do often would be cool.
The more I play, the more I find to learn and play with...
Im kind of thinking a widget type box an a page that updates every do often would be cool.
That seems to be popular with many, but to me it seems somewhat like someone leaving their car running 24/7 because they don't understand how to turn it on and off. Far better use of resources and bandwidth to get ~real time data when requested.