Embedded Web Server Using

ARM

ABSTRACT

The scope of embedded devices is increasing day by day and the demand will be further more
when networking technology is incorporated into these devices. Network embedded system have
become quite important; especially for monitoring and control of the industrial devices or home
appliances. HTTP protocol is able to provide communication between larger distant client
servers. In this paper a hard-wired web server is proposed using ARM cortex M3 micro
controller. This microcontroller is 32 bit and supporting 10 X 100 Mbps Ethernet
communications. Since ARM processor has fast execution capability and Ethernet standard can
provide internet access with reasonable speed, this system is suitable for enhancing security in
industrial conditions by remotely monitoring various industrial appliances where high safety and
care is a necessity. In this paper we design a system using arm cortex micro controller to read
data on HTTP protocol continuously and this design can be used for monitoring and controlling
various devices which supports internet connectivity. This architecture is suitable for distributed
measurement/control system and provides scalable networking solutions which can be optimized
for educational laboratories, instrumentation and even in medical field.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

COURCE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

ABSTRACT
1. INTRODUCTION 1
2. WHAT IS EMBEDDED WEB SERVER? 2
3. BLOCK DIAGRAM 3
4. INTERACTIVE DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM 5
4.1 Embedded web server architecture 6
4.2 Data manegment in the system 7
5. HARDWARE 8
5.1 LPC1768processor 9
6. SYSTEM SOFTWARE 10
6.1 Ethernet standard 10
6.2 client server communication 11
6.3 HTTP Protocol 11
7. RESULTS 12
8. ADVANTAGES,DISADVANTAGES and APPLICATIONS 13
8.1 ADVANTAGES 13
8.2 DISADVANTAGES 13
8.3APPLICATIONS 13
9. CONCLUSION 14

REFERENCES 15

COURCE OUTCOMES

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
An embedded web server is a web server which runs on an embedded system with limited
computing resources to serve embedded web documents to a web browser. By embedding a web
server into a network device, it is possible to provide a web based management user interface,
which are user friendly, inexpensive, cross-platform and network ready. Embedded systems are
specialized computer systems designed and optimized to perform a particular task. Usually they
are a part of a larger system or a machine In today's world, embedded systems are everywhere
homes, offices, cars, factories, hospitals, plains and consumer electronics. They span all aspects
of modern life and examples of their use are numerous.

Modern embedded systems are able to connect to the internet and can be remotely maintained
and diagnosed. M2M(Machine to machine) communication is growing with a considerable rate.
The possibility to connect two or more embedded systems enables developers to build more
powerful distributed systems such as networked embedded systems .Remote maintenance is
performed by different communication protocols. The most common communication protocol is
HTTP which enables remote system control and monitoring.

A web server is a computer program that implements HTTP protocol. It accepts HTTP requests
from clients like web browsers and serves HTTP responses which are usually HTML pages with
linked objects. There are many web servers available, and a number of them are free, like
Apache, AOL, Roxen. Internet Information Services, Sun Java System web Server are some of
the most common commercial web servers. Some web servers can run on almost any operating
system while others are platform specific.

The general purpose web servers are intended to run on powerful server computers, workstations
or personal computers and support a number of advanced features. On the other hand, web
servers for embedded system shave limited resources and offer only a set of required features.

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CHAPTER 2

WHAT IS EMBEDDED WERB SERVER?

An embedded web server is a software program that runs on a device or computer and provides
web services to other devices or computers. It is a type of web server that is designed to be used
in embedded systems, such as routers, firewalls, and other network devices. Embedded web
servers are used to provide web-based access to the device's configuration, status, and other
information. They can also be used to provide web-based access to applications and services
running on the device.

Figure 1: Embedded web server

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CHAPTER 3

BLOCK DIAGRAM

Figure 2: Block diagram of embedded web server

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BLOCK DIAGRAM EXPLANATION

This implements an EMBEDDED WEBSERVER with networking capability using ARM
microcontroller. Various Analog Sensors can be connected to the ARM Board. The project
includes complete implementation of an HTTP Web Server in am ARM7microcontroller. The
websites are stored inside the program space of the ARM7microcontroller and features a flexible
pattern parsing algorithm. This supports using keywords to instruct the web server to include
special data in the page delivered to the browser (i.e. current temperature as ASCII text).Using
any standard web browser on any PC you can access the web pages performing a variety of
operations like viewing a temperature plot of the last 24 hours, control the servo motor,
read/write any I/O pin by using a simple mouse-click, upload any file to the Data Flash storage
and access files stored on the flash. The web server implements ARP,IP, TCP, UDP, HTTP
(server), NTP (client), servo control, I/O Pin control, 2ndsoftware UART etc. This system is very
suitable for acquiring data or signals form a large scale industry field. Hundreds of such
terminals can be grouped within a network. One PC is enough for monitoring many terminals.
Link from server to the internet can be also established to realize remote monitoring. We can see
the data in the office, even at home if we have internet access. This system can also be integrated
into ERP system, which will improve management level access. This system will not only be
useful in industry field, but also has great future in smart-house applications, networked lighting
control system and other distributed control systems.

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CHAPTER 4

INTERACTIVE DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM

Interactive Internet-based systems provide a way to monitor and adjust using standard web
browsers and a PC. The target systems can be monitored and controlled independent from the
location and the platform since standard web browsers can be used on the client side. A typical
data-acquisition system is connected to web clients via the Internet.

The data acquisition system needs to relay the acquired information to the requesting clients.
Digitally acquired data are stored in web server’s data base. Whenever the client wants to access
data, it sends the request to server. This request is taken by the router, which is connected to the
internet. The web processes the request made and finally connects to the desired web server,
access the requested data and sends the data to the client.

Figure 3: client and server communication.

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4.1 Embedded Web Server Architecture

The system consists of three different parts. First is the Embedded Web Server. Second is the
user part or client and third one is the sensors and appliances to be monitored. The client thus
monitors various parameter status through sensors and also controls many industrial appliances
with the help of the web server.

An embedded web server is an ARM processor that contains an internet software suite as well as
application code for monitoring and controlling machines/systems. Embedded web servers are
integral part of an embedded network.

Figure 4: Embedded web server architecture

ARM processor is the responsible part for measuring signals and controlling the devices
remotely. Measurements can be done by DACS mode and the data are shared with clients
through embedded web server by embedded web server mode. The real time operating system
manages all the tasks such as measuring signals, conversion of signals, data base updation,
sending HTML pages and connecting/communicating with new users etc.

Web based management user interfaces using embedded web server have many advantages:
ubiquity, user-friendly, low- development cost and high maintainability. Embedded web server

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has different requirements, such as low resource usage, high reliability, security, portability and
controllability for which general web server technologies are unsuitable.

4.2 Data Management in the System

The Internet server is used to decrease the management costs by sending all the pictures (logo,
picture, bar graphics, etc.) to the client through a server on the Internet.

Text data such as coordinates, temperature, and altitude are served from the embedded system. If
bulky data are going to be sent, the embedded module is set to send the image only once via
GPRS and placed on an FTP server.

This approach eliminates the transfer of large data through GPRS more than once, thus reducing
the transfer costs, particularly if more than one client is involved or multiple requests to the same
data are needed.

Figure 5: Data management in the proposed system.

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CHAPTER 5

HARDWARE
The general hardware structure of the remote I/O data acquisition and control system based on
ARM processor. The remote I/O data acquisition and control system based on embedded ARM
platform has high universality, each acquisition and control device equipped with 24-way
acquisition/control channels and isolated from each other. Each I/O channel can select a variety
of electrical and non-electrical signals like current, voltage, resistance etc., Digital acquisition are
done by special ADC. The measured data are stored in external memory in which the memory is
act as a data base during web server mode. The ARM processor directly supports the Ethernet
service and RS485 communication. Hence the data has been stored and controlled by some other
PCs or network via RS485 and Ethernet. ARM processor has internal I2C module. So it has the
ability to communicate with any other peripherals. A Data acquisition module and a GPRS are
integrated into the embedded board to form a sample application.

Figure 6: Block diagram of embedded system with sample device attached.

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5.1 LPC1768 Processor

This is an ARM Cortex M3 based microcontroller for embed- ded applications with a high level
of integration and low power consumption. CPU operating frequency is 100MHz with 3-stage
pipeline and internal pre fetch unit. It follows Harvard architecture. It has a 512kB of flash
memory, 64kB of data memory, Ethernet MAC, USB data interface, 8 channel general purpose
DMA controller, 4 UART’s, 2 CAN channels, 2 SSP controllers, SPI interface, 3 I2C bus
interfaces, 8 channel 12-bit ADC, 10-bit DAC, Ultra low power Real Time Clock, 6-output
general purpose PWM, four general purpose timers and up to 70 general purpose I/O pins.
Moreover this controller has In System Programming and In-Application Programming
functionality through in-chip boot loader software. RMII interface is provided to Ethernet MAC.
The ADC is of successive approximation type with a 12-bit conversion rate of 200 kHz.
Individual result registers is there for each ADC channel to avoid interrupt overhead. Moreover
burst conversion mode is adopted for single or multilevel inputs.

Figure 7: System structure

Devices are connected through fast general purpose parallel I/O pins. GPIO registers are
accessed through AHB multilayer bus so that the fastest possible I/O timing can be achieved.

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CHAPTER 6

SYSTEM SOFTWARE
The software coding for the hardware functionality is written in embedded C language in Keil
Software. The TCP/IP layered model of IEEE 802.3 standard is successfully implemented in
embedded C language.

6.1 Ethernet Standard

A typical Ethernet frame format consists of 7 bytes of preamble and this is used for bit
synchronization. Start frame delimiter is of size 1 byte which is a frame flag that indicates the
start of the frame. Source and destination addresses are of same size that is 2 to 6 bytes which is
the 48-bit MAC address. Data size of 1500 bytes is allowed and frame checksum for checking
errors is of 4 byte size that cyclic redundancy check.

The Ethernet block of the system 10Mb/s or 100Mb/s Ethernet MAC that provides optimal
performance through the use of DMA hardware acceleration. It has automatic frame transmission
or reception with half or full duplex operation. The Ethernet block interfaces between the off-
chip Ethernet PHY using Reduced MII protocol and the on-chip Media Independent Interface
management serial bus.

Filtering of received frame, multicast and broadcast support for both frame transmit and receive,
power management by clock switching, automatic collision back-off and frame re- transmission
are some of the features of the Ethernet controller used for network communication in this
system.

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6.2 Client Server Communication

As we have seen before, when the client wants to access the equipments connected with the
server remotely, it enters the configured IP address and it can monitor the equipment through the
displayed HTML web page. For the communication to take place, before reception of data,
initially CRC is performed with the checksum bytes. Once it is identified that the checksum is
valid, now it checks whether the user is the authorized one or not by comparing the logged in
password with the stored password in the program. If the client is authorized one, now the
system allows collecting data say sensor data through the specified ADC channel. Client server
synchronization is performed at specific time intervals to get the most recent information.

6.3 HTTP Protocol

The protocol used for the communication between web server and web browser is Hyper Text
Transfer Protocol or HTTP protocol. This protocol defines all the basic frame work of web
communications by handling requests and also by providing control information to be transferred
between browser and server. To obtain a web document, the browser and server should establish
a connection at Port 80.

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CHAPTER 7

RESULTS
Fig shows execution results of ARM embedded web server based on DACS system. The web
pages shown are requested by the client and served by the embedded web server which is ported
on ARM processor. Client can interact with the machine through its own browser via these
embedded web pages. Every client’s control has been executed in industry via the embedded
web server.

Figure 8: Online processing web page. Figure 9: Client requesting web page.

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CHAPTER 8

ADVANTAGES, DISADVANTAGES and APPLICATIONS

8.1 ADVANTAGES

 Provides the opportunity to interact with hosting provider.

 Easy to configure.
 More flexible.
 Download capabilities.
 Web server does not allow sharing of resoures.

8.2 DISADVANTAGES

 High cost.
 Traffic congestion.
 Network delay.
 Only internet based applications can be developed.
 Overhead and lack of versatility.

8.3 APPLICATIONS

 Home appliance.
 Environmental Monitoring.
 Industrial Automation.
 Ethernet I/O Transport.
 Security Access.
 Electric wheel chairs and mobility devices.
 Pumping and ventilation system.
 Factory Automation.
 Manufacturing Control And Test Systems

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CHAPTER 9

CONCLUSION
In this application, a low-cost, Internet-based data acquisition and control system has been
designed and implemented that should find interest from researchers. The application
possibilities are virtually unlimited by attaching modules with appropriate interfaces, although
the usage of the system is demonstrated with only a few sample devices. Compared with other
applications, this system has advantages in terms of allowing direct bidirectional communication
and reducing overhead, which can be vitally important for some real-time applications. The
operational costs have been reduced by relinquishing the storage of large data to an FTP server
on the Internet. The system is designed to support both static and dynamic IPs. A method to
distribute the IP information has been developed. This cost-minimization effort is a big concern
for mobile systems using wireless communication methods and has not been discussed before.
The overall cost advantage of the system in terms of the components used makes it an attractive
choice for data-acquisition applications. The power demand of the device is still in the process of
being improved by putting the attached devices into sleep mode at times when they are not in use
to conserve power.

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REFERENCES
[1] M Poongothai; “ARM Embedded Web Server Based on DAC System”

987-1-61284-764-1/11 2011 IEEE.

[2] Alen Rajan and Aby K. Thomas; “ARN Based Embedded Web Server For Industrial
Applications”, ISBN 978-1-4675-2248-9 2012 published by Coimbatore Institute of Information
Technology.

[3] N. Kumaresan and J. Suganthi; “Intelligent Improvement in Multi-Task Data Acquisition

System Employing Low Cost Embedded Web Server”, International Journal of Computer
Applications (0975-8887) Volume 58 – N0. 8, November 2012

[4] Rui Yang, Hong Cai and Ming zhang; “Research and Implement of Ethernet Interface Based
on Embedded System,” Second International Symposium on Computational Intelligence and
Design, pp.288-291, Dec2009

[5] Manivannan, M and Kumaresan, N; “Design of On-line Interactive Data Acquisition and
Control System for Embedded Real Time Applications,” International Conference on Emerging
trends in Computer and Information Technology, pp.551-556, March 2011.

[6] Datasheet Reference Manual of LPC1768 processor.

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