Embedded Web Control Panels on the Raspberry Pi: A Design Reference

Ever thought about creating your own home control system that can be accessed through a cell phone or a web page on your home computer? How about being able to click a button and have your Raspberry Pi play a sound file or an MP3? It's all possible using the real world examples provided in this book. Programing and controlling an embedded computer like the Raspberry Pi can actually be really fun and rewarding. This book will help to open the door to some fabulous methods and sometimes unknown abilities of the user interface to control the physical hardware. You will learn things like how to play a wav file by pressing a button on a web page, turn on and off General Purpose Input Output (GPIO) pins for external control using relays and transistors to control lights, LEDs and other devices, or read and monitor the CPU temperature over time without refreshing the page. This book will walk you through the "Common Gateway Interface" (CGI) and how to create a static web control panel with dynamic elements that will update without performing a visible page refresh. CGI data input, output, and environment variables will be explained and demonstrated with real-life code examples. These secrets and much more will be presented within these pages. This book serves as both a technical reference and a tutorial providing information and examples that build over time resulting in a full Static Embedded Web Control Panel example. Along the way you will be provided with information that explains many interesting features and concept Embedded Control Topics: ¿ Form a basis for Smart Home control ¿ Control GPIO pins over the Internet ¿ Use a Smart Phone, PC, or Tablet for control ¿ Create a Web control panels framework ¿ Understanding Dynamic HTML elements ¿ Use CGI programming for Web based control ¿ Learn how to drive Relays with Transistors ¿ Learn how to connect LEDs to the GPIO pins ¿ Using Web security to control access ¿ Learn how to use GPIO Character Device Drivers ¿ WebIO & IPC