Patent ID: 7203736

Claim:
A system comprising: at least one physical device; and a microcontroller which controls said at least one physical device in response to an incoming communication from a remote user, which incoming communication complies with a predetermined communications protocol; wherein said microcontroller includes a physical communication unit, a memory unit, and a microprocessor coupled to the physical communication unit and the memory unit, the microcontroller is integrated with the at least one physical device that it controls; the memory unit stores an integrated piece of software that executes a single processing thread and is configured i) to perform a server function and a control application function, and ii) to support protocol stacks; in operation the integrated software is executed by the microprocessor, and the incoming communication is received at the physical communication unit, transmitted to the microprocessor, and processed in accordance with the integrated software; the physical device is controlled by the control application function in accordance with commands generated from an interpreted communication; feedback from the physical device is processed and transmitted back to the remote user via the server function; thread mastery remains with the control application function in the absence of communication requirements, and is passed to the server function only when incoming communications are received and when response communications are transmitted; and during processing of a communication, the server function periodically returns thread mastery to the control application function.