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Web Server On a Business Card
mollyhackit writes "We've seen tiny Web servers in the past, but rarely ones that are home-built. Here's a guide to building your own tiny web server with a footprint no larger than a business card. The design uses two major chips. One handles the SPI to MAC/PHY translation for the ethernet jack. The other chip is a PIC24F, which hosts a simple web server and reads files stored on a microSD card. All components run at a low 3.3 volts. Part of the compactness of the design comes from the PIC24F having programmable pins; only four jumper wires were needed. The single-sided SMD design is easy to manufacture at home. Part 1 covered many of the 24F's features and both posts have full code available."
If every a server was going to be slashdotted....
Cruise TT
I'm glad I don't have any 1cm thick business cards in my wallet.
Now if this could serve up pages wirelessly: hello future!
but what's the real point? Anyone with a website that has any real traffic to it is going to need a more powerful server then that... this device is more of a "hey look guys, this is so cool" instead of a "hey boss, I found a way to cut spending on our new web server"
I wonder. If these are cheap, small, low power and low heat, could one simply create a vast array of these then use one central server to direct each connection to one "server", with a traditional (LAMP etc) server taking up the excess if the number of units runs out?
Sounds like a holiday project for me...
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
If "every" a server...? What?
Next, they'll implant a webserver chip into my ear under the skin.
No need to go webhosting with Rackspace. :)
slashdot rocks
I think he accidentally the whole server....
There have been smaller webservers made. Just a few
http://www.webservusb.com/
https://research.sun.com/spotlight/2004-12-20_vgupta.html
http://linuxmafia.com/wearables/
http://d116.com/ace/
http://tzywen.com/photos/smallservers/sfarm2.jpg
This after 3 seconds of typing in the search "smallest web server" in google and waiting for 0.11 seconds. So what does this one make it so special?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
There's quite a bit of small scale ethernet stuff available - my favorite chip at the moment for handling ethernet is Wiznet's tiny W5100 (or its bigger brother the W5300). These contain not only an ethernet MAC/PHY but a TCP offload engine, so your microcontroller can get on with whatever job it needs to and only deal with the higher levels of the protocol - meaning the software on your microcontroller can be simpler and spend more of its time dealing with whatever task you're using it for. The W5100 is in a 0.4mm pitch LQFP-80. I've been having great fun with this little chip: http://spectrum.alioth.net/doc
The W5100 also can act as a true memory mapped device (you can either talk to it with SPI, or via an indirect parallel bus, or through direct addressing) so it's a great chip for 8 bit CPUs which have a full address/data bus because you can transfer data to and from the chip many times faster than you can with SPI.
There are also other ethernet MAC/PHY (with no TCP offload) chips other than Microchip's offering - SiLabs have one in several packages (including a terribly hard to solder by hand leadless QFN).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It's not gay, it's Metrosexual, we're totally straight, just happen to be in touch with our feminine side.
There's lots of applications for little http servers that have nothing to do with "websites".
Stick this server as the "upstream" of a wireless access point, and you've got a cheap throwdown local information server for a business without opening yourself up to wardrivers.
If you have a phone with a SD card and a camera, you can take some pictures then use this to post them on a LAN.
YOu can plug this in when your regular server is down for some reason.
If you're concerned about theft, something like this is easier to secure than some little computer that needs cooling and AC, and less of a loss if someone does rip it off.
Once they add the ability to drive control lines through a RESTful interface, you can stick this anywhere you can run ethernet to control relays, turn lights on and off, etcetera...
There's a lot going on here and it sounds like a neat project, but I just hope that beginners aren't misled. This is a complicated project and there's a lot of separate skills which would all have to be learned at once: masking/etching PCBs, fine-pitch SMT soldering, lots of pieces of code that all have to play together right.
Just hoping that newbies will realize that there are simpler electronics projects (relevant shameless plug) with much more instructional guidance they should start with before taking on something like this.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
best first every!
You should have IPv6 address and connectivity on them. China already is running out of IPv4 addresses for gods sake.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
This sounds like a really good reason to remember to take my wallet out of my pants before I run them through the washer.
"As a controls engineer I can just imagine tracking the temp in every room of my house with respect to outside temp and setting up a sweet PID controller on my thermostat to control temps much better than a single temp sensor in a central location in the house. Toss some flappers into the air ducts and you could probably set up a house to keep a temp +-5 degrees throughout the entire house."
Or I could buy a programmable thermostat that does all that.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
This has been a long standing project at my old college.
Yes we even implemented a small motor so that through a web interface you could move the server on the desk.
No it didn't run linux but, why use an os that you didnt create yourself.
I don't understand this obsession with making things smaller and smaller - I want my stuff to be bigger and bigger. For example, I have my web server inside an old Cray Y-MP shell (not with original hardware, mind you). Then again, I live in an old church and have plenty of room to spare...
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Ahhhh,
the new gay.
It's not Metrosexual, it's a bunch of hairy dudes that want to feel pretty.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
About 8 years ago I was running a webservers on a smartcard CPU's (both Javacard and Microsoft's discontinued .Net card). It's the size of the chip on that SIM card you use in your GSM phone (which is also a smartcard). Smaller and thinner than a US dime. These don't typically have ethernet ports but they do have USB.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Evil-X, is that you?
Free Martian Whores!
Whatever you are saying is not true because Jesus was my father when he mated with a tyrannosaurus to create GOD!
Slashdot has a mostly male audience, but its denizens have aproximately the same ratio of gays to straights as non-nerd sites.
A server is a computer that serves web pages to your computer. A Troll is someone who "posts controversial and irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.[2]"
In other words, you and yo' momma.
Now go away or I shall taunt you again, fool.
Free Martian Whores!
Or a Cray-2 with little plastic fish floating around, but the Fluorinert would probably bankrupt you :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How about a web server in an RFID tag? Needs no power supply.
I blogged about turning your phone into a web server in 2003 here: http://javaswamy.blogspot.com/2003/09/j2me-turning-your-phone-into-web.html I ran a web server on my nextel i830 at the time. Any one can connect to the webserver and the server provides my GPS location to the user.
It was a little bigger than a business card - but was able to dim 32 channels of AC power for my lighting strands. I Used 2 of these board to control all the lights.
All the lighting commands were pumpted to via. UDP packets from my Linux server - it was a pretty impressive display!
Check it out at: http://www.bradgoodman.com/dimwatt
Did you take out the pews to make room for the garbage?
Method of processing duck feet
A link for the young-uns.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Geek 1: "I won't be satisfied until I need an electron microscope to see my web server!"
Geek 2: "I won't be satisfied until I need a crane to plug in my web server!"
Would that make them Cray-fish?
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
Wouldn't a linksys WRTSL54GS (basically a wrt54g with a USB port) running openwrt and serving files off a USB stick be an easier and neater soloution?
It's a different solution, certainly. In a lot of circumstances it's superior, and if you have static files you wouldn't even need the USB port. On the other hand, if you already have the WAP (or WAPs), particularly if you've got multiple locations already set up and an existing inventory of devices...?
There are also existing mini-servers like the Gumstix device or Soekris' boxes that would be competing with this for other solutions. What I was really getting at is that there's plenty of applications for a small static web server that doen't have anything to do with putting a server on the internet for general world-wide access. :)
I have built these type web servers before using AVR chips. The one I use most is to control the gate on my property. I add a short cut to the website to my iPhone and it is a great gate opener.
This is like the 100th PIC-based web server. Do these guys never think to see if someone else has already done a PIC web server before writing their own? Hard to be sure since I can find mention of the dimensions, but this one looks to be about the same size. This one's been around for ages. And there plenty more. There's even this mini web server/tcp-ip stack for the PIC that compiles to a remarkable 30 bytes of PIC code.
Nothing to see here. Move along...
I didn't ask why he did it. That answer is obvious. I asked what would the need be for actually using the device.
Ah, I see your problem. You're assuming utility.
There is none. The need for using the device is zero. It's not a toaster or a TV, it's a work of art. It exists merely to have people admire it.
A large percentage of elegant hacks and beautiful bits of mathematics exist for the same reason. Not because they fill some immediate need. Simply for the beauty of it.
Granted, someone somewhere down the line will usually figure out some practical application of some beautiful piece of abstract thought or arcane geekery, but for now it's merely a piece of art. Appreciate it as such and you'll understand.
Although if I had made the thing, I'd bring it on job interviews. Plug it in to a PC and have the interviewer surf your resume and previous work if they'll let you. Maybe even a multimedia presentation of you building the thing. They'd remember who you are, that's for sure.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Can you fit an ENIAC in that church?
...a Rolidex Cluster of these?
another anon heard from...
1 battery a day will work for a mini spy sever
Nokia offers an Apache distro for Symbian phones, open-source, free, etc.
http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/mobile-web-server/
(And folks don't write off the 800 lb. gorilla called Nokia from the mobile space too early; the nation of Finland is motivated and hard working, and gets technology like open-source, etc. Disclaimer, I did a project at Nokia and that company blows my mind. Talk about running on all cylinders!)
btw, I've heard of folks getting the LAMP CMS Drupal running on Symbian phones.
How many poles did you have to take to determine this?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"I want my stuff to be bigger and bigger."
that's what she said.
The lucky few who survived the bubble might still remember a webserver in a fly... back in 2001.
"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
That explains why I never get laid. I guess I need to get me one of these web servers right away!
I don't understand this obsession with making things smaller and smaller - I want my stuff to be bigger and bigger.
I've got some pills you might be interested in...only $19.95 + S&H
There's no place like
I say not small enough. I want to meet a babe with 10 web servers built into her false nails.
The Admin and the Engineer
Yeah I know this is slashdot and NetBurner provides commercial products but it's the most fun/best embedded platform I've worked with. Complete core + dev board = $99, or just core alone is $69, program it in c or c++, UC/OS real time multitasking OS, web server, tcp/udp, lots of other protocols, a/d, gpio, 147MHz cpu, blah blah. GUI multithreaded debugging with Eclipse. Fun if you don't want to build your own.
http://netburner.com/products/development_kits/network_development.html
It's easy to get confused. Some use the terms 'pitcher' and 'catcher', some 'dominant' and 'submissive' but here we use 'server' and 'client'. Don't worry, its easy to pick up the right lingo, there are plenty of friendly folks here readily avaliable to spend some quality time discussing the intimacies of this site.
What this guy has done isn't new, but it's important. If you are a software or electronic engineer there is a huge point to this sort of thing. Anyone who can write even a hello world app in a desktop or web programming language should read the following:
A micro controller is a great device. In the right hands and with the right hardware attached it can accomplish complicated and powerful tasks using small amounts of space and energy. On the downside, just using them requires specalist knowledge which takes many years and many $$ to obtain. In addition, you are stuck with C to write software.
Now imagine that you can open a network socket to that micro controller, and use TCP/IP to communicate with it over the internet. You have, basically, API access to your embedded micro controller using ANY programming language you like - including the web scripting languages. You can build a desktop or web application that is capable of communicating directly with a micro controller in any physical location that you can reach with a network cable.
Embedded networking bridges the gap between software and electronic engineering. It is providing language neutral remote access to a micro controller and all its functions, and all you need is an IDE and an internet connection! Imagine the possibilities of the utility of an embedded system, with the power and flexibility of php/mySQL or .NET, Java etc.
Try not to think about the specific "point" of embedded networking. It's too new for most people to get their heads around; imagine asking people what the internet would be useful for in the 80's. You could ask a very intelligent person but I doubt even they would predict Quake, Slashdot and Ebay/Paypal, and so on.
Here are some random examples if you really need some spoonfed imagination:
I could go on. Basically this stuff has been around for years, but has been extremely expensive, complex, and generally out of reach of most people - even commercial product development teams. Very, very recently (in relative terms), two important things have happened: it got cheap and it got easy. The project in the article is an example of this. The next 10 years are going to be very exciting for EE's and SE's. I guess you comp sci weirdos can come too :P
I guess you say the samething whenever you look down while going to the restroom at a urinal? "Why can't you be bigger bigger like the things I own?"
Does anyone remember the posting from a looong time ago that showed a webserver that ran off a potato? The slashdot article was at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1947222
But that turned out to be a joke. The real deal can be seen at http://d116.com/spud/
"It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet (2.6 m by 0.9 m by 26 m), took up 680 square feet (63 m), and consumed 150 kW of power."
Yes. I wouldn't be able to afford the power consumption, though. That's the main reason why I tossed out the contents of the Cray in the first place. It was anything but cower conservative.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!