controlling an embedded board through internet

Depends on what you want to control.

Begin here: "How would I 'control it' if I were seated at the 'console'?"

Actually I want to control my embedded board of ARm through the internet from other computer from anywhere and for that I want to control it through the webpage and not only control it but also want to study it's status .

waiting for reply

Thank you

--------------------------------------- Posted through

Re-read my original answer. Until you can answer that, you won't know how to proceed.

The point is that you're going to have to invent a language or protocol to express the controls you want to effect. You have a lot of options:

-- binary packets like the contents of C structs sent via UDP

-- serial character strings (as you would type at a terminal) sent via TCP

-- HTTP requests and responses between your Web Client and a Web Server in the embedded device.

There's no one way, and lots of reasons for loving or hating the various options.

Mel.

hello bro

I have read your answer very carefully and what I got is that your point is in controlling the device through the telnet from the console............right

but I don't want that , what I actually want is that I want to control my board through the internet with the help of a webpage designed to get the status of the devices connected to my board and than controlling them according to the situation.

So I think I am pretty clear now.

thank you

--------------------------------------- Posted through

TCP

hello mel

I want to go to the third on which you have suggested , yeah I want to control the board through the webpage designed for it and in which I can get the status of the peripherals connected to my arm board and than want to control them accordingly.

But I am not able to just get the clue that how could I proceed and what things I will require in particular.

Thank you

--------------------------------------- Posted through

We did this on a fairly heavyweight embedded system -- Mini-ITX board with Debian and a standard LAMP-like system: Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP, plus custom C programs run under Common Gateway Interface. CGI is compute-intensive but simple to program under. Somebody here accused me of not being an embedded programmer at all, because that setup really is an orthodox web application. Performance requirements were not high -- there are hints that that software may be too heavy (I'd rather use SQLite), but that isn't my problem yet.

Programs under CGI just use HTML to say what they have to say, and pick apart FORM POST data to do what they have to do. The Web is full of instructional help.

Mel.

No, you're just repeating the same VAGUE request.

Forget the internet. Until you have *some* way of sitting down AT THE CONSOLE (keyboard + display "somehow" attached to your board) and getting the information and control you want from your I/O's, there is no way you will be able to magically do this "over the wire".

"I bought an internal combustion engine (size unspecified). How can I control the aircraft remotely?"

(i.e., there are too many things missing between the first statement and the following query: is the engine sufficiently powered to provide necessary lift in a propellor driven aircraft? is it, instead, to be used in a lighter-than-air vessel? what ground speed will it achieve? What range will the "control" be required to operate over? etc.)

*I* have a scalpel -- would you entertain questions regarding how to perform an appendectomy? :-/

Here's your answer:

- set up a web server on your host

- create some pages that show the status you want to observe

- create some pages that implement the controls you want

- write everything "in the middle" to make it work

That's about as vague as your query...

as

"

A few references that might help you to get started:

Jan Axelson's ethernet web page:

A $25 Web Server:

Access Your Embedded Controller with Ease through a Web Server:

-- Joe

I totally agree.

To the OP, some example questions to make you think about the issues:

How are the devices connected to your board ?

How can a program running on the board extract the status information it needs from the devices ?

If you do this by triggering a CGI script from your webpage, your CGI script will need to extract the required information in the same way.

Based on the vagueness of the OP's message, I think the OP is still at the level of trying to understand the workflow for the press a button to trigger a CGI script -> poll devices in CGI script -> render output in HTML page approach.

If the OP understands this already, I apologise. However, if this is the issue you are trying to understand, I would suggest you write a simple CGI script to read, for example, some counters from /proc or something else that is continually changing, such as the system time, and output this as a webpage generated by a CGI script.

If the OP already knows the CGI script workflow, then please tell us, in detail, exactly what part of this you are stuck on.

Someone did a _very_ entertaining post based on this theme a few years ago. "I'm a experienced surgeon, I just have a few basic questions about using a scalpel" was the general theme. :-)

[To the OP] And since no-one else has mentioned it yet, please make sure you build some level of security into your application.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Exactly. "What do *you* have to do to get the information that you want from this mysterious board?" If you can't get the board to provide that to you presently, then this is one *big* piece of the puzzle that is missing -- installing web services will, eventually, result in the question: "How do I get the web server to poll the status of these inputs?"

(much easier to go from "I have this information available when I do the following... now, how to I tie that in to a web-based service?")

I'm wondering if the lack of understanding goes *deeper*?! I.e., if you can't do what you want from a *console* (however that is implemented), then you don't even know where the Yellow Brick Road

*starts*!

I suspect the entire backend is fuzzy, here. :<

Hello guys

First of all I want to say thanks to you guys for their support.

actually now I am pretty clear that what I want to do I think.

So first of all I want to install the webserver on my arm board and for that I have gone for the lighttpd webserver as it is light and very much resourceful.

So what I want to know is that after cross compiling the lighttdp webserver through arm-linux-gcc on my linux desktop, how can I port it to the arm platform.

I mean how can I install the lighttdp libraries on the arm platform so hat the web server runs on the arm platform as it is totally different from installing the lighttdp on the linux desktop.

Thank you

Piyush Pandey

--------------------------------------- Posted through

You initial posting lead me to believe that you had all the required software pieces in place, but didn't know how to make them work together.

If your problem is trying to make the webserver itself run on the board, then you are probably better off trying the webserver project's support forums.

Can I assume you have looked through the project's support forums already to see if someone else has encountered the same problems as you have ?

When you post there, you will have to be much more clear about that you are trying to do however. For example, we still don't know exactly what board you are using and what memory/storage resources you have available on the board so we don't know if you can build the webserver on the board itself instead of having to cross-compile it on a host Linux box.

We also still don't know how your devices are connected to your board and what procedures your board-based programs use to interact with them.

BTW, are you actually familiar with the polling/configuring devices from a CGI routine workflow or will that be something you need to learn as well ?

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

er

t

How about using a linux distribution that runs on your platform? Debian, for example, should work.