The plausibility of controlling your toaster, dishwasher, radio alarm clock from a web browser just got a lot more plausible. A University of Massachusetts graduate is claiming to have built the world’s smallest web server. It is the size of a match head and it costs less than $1. The single chip computer runs an iPic web-server and is claimed to be the tiniest implementation of a TCP/IP stack and an HTTP 1.0 web-server.
The chip is a PIC 12C509A, running at 4MHz the CPU, with 256 bytes of memory, serial port interface circuitry and clock oscillator. The TCP/IP stack is implemented on a small 8-pin low- power microcontroller using 512 words of program ROM. Its inventor says that if iPic can fit in a PIC, it can fit in just about anything.
The chip is connected to an internet router and could be embedded in every appliance and every lamp socket in the house, says iPic creator Hariharasubrahmanian Shrikumar. The devices and appliances can all then be controlled from a web-browser
