> I think IoTs with web interfaces aren't a bad idea.
I think it is. The internet-of-things does not need to suffer from massive power consumption and hard to implement on the micro-controller scale protocols.
It needs something much more along the lines of encrypted UDP than that it needs to use 'web technologies'. Imagining a stack made on 'web technologies' running off power harvested over a relatively long period of time is painful.
I had in mind more things like routers, home automation management consoles, etc. which have had web interfaces for a very long time, but it doesn't take all that much power to do it[1], unless you want to run a full Linux kernel and JS and all that other bloat which tiny IoTs don't need.
Indeed. Basic web technologies - client-side HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and I mean writing them directly, not via absurdly wasteful layers of JS frameworks) - are a great tools for adding UIs to connected devices. You don't need that much resources for a HTTP server if you already have TCP/IP connectivity, and you also don't need much resources to output some rudimentary HTML or to process POST requests.
It's also a pretty cool tool for adding UIs to software you code locally. Embedding a HTTP server is simple in most languages, and for some cases, a web interface will be much simpler than building an equivalent from "native" UI components.
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Incidentally, one of the best demonstrations I saw of that was in the book Land of Lisp. The book teaches you Common Lisp by guiding you through writing a few games. At some point, you end up embedding in your game a very simple HTTP server - and suddenly, you get to have interactive graphics (via SVG) without the author having to teach you lots of stuff about some random UI library.
I think it is. The internet-of-things does not need to suffer from massive power consumption and hard to implement on the micro-controller scale protocols.
It needs something much more along the lines of encrypted UDP than that it needs to use 'web technologies'. Imagining a stack made on 'web technologies' running off power harvested over a relatively long period of time is painful.