Take a look around here and you’ll find all kinds of embedded web servers. This one doesn’t look all that interesting, especially because it’s just a NIC plugged into a development board. But for us the interesting part is in how [Andrew Rossignol] chose to format the webpage assets to best utilize the under-powered server.

The project was spawned as part of a class in Internet Embedded Systems which [Andrew] is taking. The board has an ATmega16 microcontroller and he’s using the ever popular ENC28J60 on that Ethernet adapter board. The TuxGraphics TCP/IP Stack takes care of communications with the network.

One constraint which [Andrew] imposed upon himself was to use just a single response which the available RAM limits to about  700 bytes. Any decent webpage needs to have at least some graphics but that’s tough with the size limit. He managed to display an AVR logo by optimizing an SVG in Inkscape then stripped the rest of the cruft using VIM (explained in the demo after the break). With that piece of Linux-fu in his pocket he set to work streamlining the CSS file. The webpage isn’t just static either. He displays the server up-time and even allows the relays and LEDs on the Olimex board to be controlled.

Despite the limitations of the ATmega family they still seem to do some amazing Internet-connected stuff. Here’s one used as a Minecraft server.

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