Webduino is obsolete

[Ben Combee]

http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/05/18/welcome-arduino-yun-the-first-member-of-a-series-of-wifi-products-combining-arduino-with-linux/

This is about the same price as an Arduino + Ethernet shield and much, much more capable.  The network stack works over WiFi and has a full Linux engine running a real HTTP server, so the Arduino side can focus on real time reading of sensors or controlling of hardware.

With hardware like this coming on board, I'm really seeing Webduino as a dead end for new projects.  It's OK for taking advantage of hardware you've already got, but the stack isn't going to be able to handle HTTP 1.0 or 1.1 well, there's no room for any SSL, file access on SD is really hard. Trivial apps are cool, but anything serious needs more hardware, IMO.

[Marek Grossman]

Hello Ben,
      sorry but I don't think Webduino is obsolete. I very useful for simple devices with Arduino Uno and so, where is Arduino with linux overkill and expensive. Thanks You for this library.

I add a feature to server files from SD card for setup page for the device ( MAC, IP, MASK and so). But I am near of SRAM limit ( leave me cca 380B).
Could You advice me how to optimalized Your library to get more free memory?
Do You have idea how to upload files to SD card?

Thanks
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Mareg

[Ben Combee]

The limits you hit are reasons why I think the library may have run its course.  A Webduino server is very limited -- one of those limits is the inability to serve more than one session at a time, so any request blocks any other request until the first one is finished.  That makes it inappropriate for serving files to a modern web browser, as those expect to be able to make multiple connections to a server, so if you have just a couple of active clients, you quickly overload the connection queue in the W5100 chip.

As for optimization, it's tough.  We already have done a huge amount to push strings into flash and to not store buffers of data, but instead process connections byte by byte.  There could be some additional savings by changing some of the string comparison work to use flash-based strings, but I doubt you'd get more than 100 bytes back of SRAM.

Writing to SD is more complicated that reading, as you not only need to parse a FAT file structure, you have to be able to allocate new structures, write directories, and buffer data to output to a file.  There is some code to do data logging to a SD card out there, but I've never used it.

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[Marek Grossman]

I am not so fool as I looked, I don't want to make http server from Ardudino. I just to use the http service for set some settings to save its in EEPROM (MAC, IP - won't compile special program for every piece) and upload some file ( for example files for 3D  printer) to SD card.

So I think be better try to take only some pieces of code, for my targets ( serve form for setup from flash) and try to write file to SD.

Thank You for comments and attentions.

--

Mareg

[Kelly Keeton]

I think its crazy to say this is dead.. I dont even see the yun available for sale, the RPi would be more cost effective at this point. I can get a Duo+Shield for $20.

Additionally to say that your user community wants to use the Duo as a webserver is insane IMO. Only one user is ever logged into my Uno.

[Ben Combee]

On Monday, August 5, 2013 11:13:07 AM UTC-5, Kelly Keeton wrote:

I think its crazy to say this is dead.. I dont even see the yun available for sale, the RPi would be more cost effective at this point. I can get a Duo+Shield for $20.

Additionally to say that your user community wants to use the Duo as a webserver is insane IMO. Only one user is ever logged into my Uno.

I don't think I said it was dead, just that it was obsolete.

However, I've been rethinking that a bit.  I think the use case of having the Arduino serve general web pages to browsers is a bit silly, but I'm much more interested in having Webduino evolve to be more friendly to building REST-style APIs for projects.  Generally, APIs require much less formatting and boilerplate, so they're friendly with regards to ROM space.  They also don't tend to link to other resources, so you only have one request from a client at a time, which stresses the TCP/IP interface a lot less.

I still think the cost of Arduino + Ethernet is a bit ridiculous compared to some of the cheap ARM platforms, but it can be simpler to get the embedded code working.