I am developing a control device with an embedded webserver. The webserver provides a control interface to any web browser that requests it (from Windows browsers, Mac browsers, iPhone android etc).
The problem I am having is with a general way of generically knowing how to access the device. i.e. what address to type in the web browser.
Fixed IPs are too techie for my users and could go wrong as my device could be plugged into many different Local networks. Using uPnp service discovery requires software to run on the client for some platforms and isn't as natural as just typing a web address. I want to implement Name Resolution.
My current implementation uses the netbios protocol. So from a windows browser I can type //controller/ and it works but this doesn't work with Macs or smartphones. I can in addition try to implement Apples mDnsresponder which should make Macs and iPhones play happy (although i think then im limited to //controller.local/). Maybe similar things exist for Android, Symbian etc too but is there not a more universal solution for creating one network name that I could try?
The platform is currently based on a TI Cortex M3 processor and lwIP.
Any help or suggestions for how to find a solution are much appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Bob