This post was originally published on DZone (IoT)
Overview
A web dashboard serves as the “front panel” for an embedded product — whether that product is a rack-mounted industrial controller, a bike-mounted GPS tracker, or a battery-powered soil-moisture sensor buried in a greenhouse bed. Because the dashboard is delivered over plain HTTP(S) and rendered in any modern browser, users do not have to download a native app, install drivers, or worry about operating-system compatibility; the interface is as portable as a URL. Typical tasks include:
Toggling outputs (relays, MOSFETs, LEDs) Inspecting live data such as temperature, humidity, current draw, or RSSI Adjusting parameters like Wi-Fi credentials, alarm set-points, sampling rates Collecting diagnostics like log files or memory statistics for field support staff Implementation Approaches
Embed an HTTP server — Mongoose, lwIP-HTTPD, MicroPython’s uHTTPD, or a hand-rolled socket handler – inside the firmware. Then choose, or mix, the patterns below. Each technique sits at a distinct point on the scale of resource cost versus user-experience richness.
1. CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
Classic CGI ties a URL such as /led.cgi to a firmware function that executes and returns HTML:
LED %s”, on ? “ON”:”OFF”); return 200; }” data-lang=”text/x-csrc”> int cgi_led(struct http_request *r){ bool on =
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