Patent ID: 7117268

Claim:
A system for facilitating communications with one or more embedded devices from a client application, said system comprising: gateway software running on a gateway computer, said gateway software including: device communications software, said device communications software comprising instructions for sending and receiving device messages to and from the one or more embedded devices; and gateway communications software, said gateway communications software comprising instructions for sending and receiving communications to other software; server software running on a server computer that is separate and distinct from the gateway computer, said server software including: user interface software, said user interface software being downloadable by the client application and being usable by the client application to communicate with said server software; serving software, said serving software responding to requests received from the client application through the user interface software; gateway communications software, said gateway communications software comprising instructions for sending and receiving communications to said gateway software; said system operating such that said server software communicates with said gateway software and said gateway software communicates with the one or more embedded devices, said server software operating to send a user interface component to the client application, the client application thereafter using the user interface component to communicate with an embedded device by sending communications to said server software, said server software facilitating communications with the embedded device through said gateway software, wherein the system is designed such that when a request is sent from the client application to the server computer, the server computer will determine whether the gateway or third party software is necessary to service the request.