Given a perfect world…
I would like to have my Arduino sketch controlled by a web app via an Electric Imp. It has to be an Arduino as the hardware I am trying to control doesn’t have a library that will work on the Imp (very timing-critical) but I am happy to use a $30 piece of IoT craftsmanship as nothing more than a glorified serial interface.
To be more specific, I would like to develop an existing product (that currently is controlled by Bluetooth), so that the end user can control it by way of a web-page, rather than an Android or iOS app (seems eminently more sensible to have a cloud-based product controlled from a cloud-based web-page, rather than by an installed mobile application).
But… what I can’t work out is how I differentiate my web page by device - in other words, if I sell X of the same model of devices, how can my customer control their own, rather than someone elses? Also, is there a way to differentiate the device so a customer gets a different web page depending on what device they have bought?
I am sure I can hand-craft (or at least load a database) a page that specifically pulls up the template needed for that specific customer, which would be fine if I had 5 customers, but I am hoping to have at least hundreds… and my business is in making funky stuff, not in maintaining a database of mac addresses and logins.
Everything I have seen so far is pointing me in the direction of phone apps, but I don’t know the least thing about programming for Android or iOS and would rather not have to learn (or pay someone else to do on my behalf). I am, however, a half-assed HTML/PHP/C++ web developer (in a fashion) or at least am able to fumble about and build unix servers to the stage I can host a fully-functioning web service and put content on it that works, securely.
For that reason alone, I would like to make my interface to the device web-based.
Can someone help me with the mental hook-up of whether and if so, how I can achieve this?
Further information: most of what I make is made from wood - with lots of effort and a small amount of native cunning. I am not a developer nor do I want to be one. My existing products work great with Arduino, which I have spent a lot of time getting to the stage they are now. Having IoT connectivity gives me a huge increase in the functionality I can offer, but learning a whole new development paradigm isn’t really on the cards. Squirrel, I think I can handle, given that my needs are basically to pass a number to my Arduino and get a thumbs-up back.
Any helpful direction welcomed… (unless it’s to tell me to forget it…