Website hosted on an 8-bit microcontroller

Maurycy Zarzycki ran a functional website on an ATmega328P, an 8-bit microcontroller with 2KB RAM and 32KB flash — the same chip used in the Arduino Uno [Maurycy Zarzycki's Blog]. The device serves static content over Ethernet using a stripped-down HTTP server written in C and assembly, connected via a WizNet W5500 Ethernet module.

The site responds to HTTP/1.1 requests with hardcoded HTML and assets, hand-optimized to fit within 1.5KB of remaining memory after networking overhead. No external storage is used; all content is baked into firmware. Latency is high by modern standards — often over 100ms per request — but the system sustains basic functionality without crashing.

This isn't the first web server on an 8-bit chip, but it pushes further than most: full request parsing, connection handling, and in-place rendering without offloading to external processors. Previous attempts relied on SD cards or simpler protocols; Zarzycki’s version keeps everything on-chip.

Why it matters:

• Low-end microcontrollers can now handle basic network services without Linux or RTOS, opening doors for ultra-lean IoT edge nodes.

• Engineers can prototype networked embedded systems using cheap, widely available hardware instead of moving straight to 32-bit platforms.

• The project proves that memory-constrained programming techniques — bit-packing, zero-copy parsing, static allocation — are still viable and worth teaching.

The build log includes full schematics, circuit diagrams, and source code, making it reproducible for hobbyists and educators [Maurycy Zarzycki's Blog].