Barracuda Application Server

Barracuda App Server (BAS) provides a hardware agnostic fully integrated and optimized solution for rapid IoT / M2M development of secure embedded web applications, allowing the device to achieve graphically rich, dynamic content, with a smart connected interface.

The Barracuda App Server is an RTOS ready embedded web server C library with an integrated scripting engine.

 Barracuda App Server embedded into an application

The BAS Architecture adopts to the complexities of today's distributed network environments by also enabling bridging server-side logic for deeply embedded devices to a dedicated host or cloud service.

It may take some time to truly appreciate what the Barracuda App Server can do for you. We provide many tutorials and demos. A good introduction is our tutorial:
How to Modernize Web Based Device Management.

Let Your Embedded Developers Focus on What They Are Good At

Full-Stack and Embedded Developer Collaboration

The Barracuda App Server provides a high level development environment that enables full-stack developers to design web based user interfaces for devices. This is possible thanks to the scripting language integrated in the Barracuda App Server. A full-stack developer can design web interfaces for devices -- something that they would normally not be able to do since they are not C programmers. Your embedded engineers can now focus on your device and only need to provide a device API for the full-stack developer(s).

The term full-stack means developers who are comfortable working with both back-end and front-end technologies. To be more specific, it means that the developer can work with LSP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and everything in between, including Ajax, REST, and WebSockets.

Barracuda App Server Components Interactive Diagram

Barracuda App Server

Barracuda App Server Features & Advantages

Protect Data Exchanges with Embedded SSL

The Barracuda App Server delivers embedded security and embedded encryption specifically tailored for compact devices via Real Time Logic’s SharkSSL.

Easily design advanced secure network protocols such as our Lua powered SMQ broker by using the Barracuda App Server.

Improve Time-to-Market

The Barracuda App Server radically simplifies and shortens the development cycle for devices that need remote management or supervision. The Lua Server Pages virtual machine plug-in makes developing applications fast and easy.

Reduced Total Cost of Ownership

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the primary reason that many large companies (e.g., Honeywell, ABB) have selected our Barracuda App Server over Open Source alternatives, but there are other important factors for choosing our product. These include a reduced time to market due to dramatically shortened development time; a high level of security; a framework that can be used as the cornerstone for all current and future Human to Machine and Machine to Machine interfaces that may be built into products; and, notably, easy access to our experienced Real Time Logic support personnel.

Reduced Cost of Goods

With a modern web interface, connected devices can avoid the additional expense of an onboard display. Where applications are limited by size, weight, and power constraints - such as military and aerospace applications and in highly competitive markets such as consumer goods - web interfaces deliver functionality and ease-of-use without the additional cost.

Integrate with Your Choice of Embedded Operating Systems and Platforms

The Barracuda App Server has been ported to many popular embedded operating systems, including INTEGRITY and µ-velOSity (Green Hills Software), VxWorks (Wind River), ThreadX/NetX (Express Logic), RTXC Quadros (Quadros Systems), QNX (QNX Software Systems), Embedded Linux, Windows CE, embOS (SEGGER), SMX (Micro Digital), MQX (Freescale), and FreeRTOS/LwIP(Netconn). Both the Barracuda App Server and the Barracuda Web Server can easily be ported to additional operating systems as needed.

Customize and Upgrade Remote, In-Field Devices

The Barracuda App Server allows you to remote manage your in-field devices and it includes such features as:

  • Lua server Pages enable dynamic upgrade of applications in a running system without requiring restart of the server.
  • PikeHTTP Client Library provides the capability to easily complete remote firmware upgrades.

Access a Wide Range of Built-in Embedded Web Services and Application Components

Barracuda App Server integrates a full range of integrated web services such as secure sockets/WebSockets, MQTT, SMQ, AJAX, REST, SOAP, JSON, XML web services, and WebDAV (secure network file system).

A question that is frequently asked by our customers is how to access their own proprietary C functions from Lua code. Lua to C/C++ access is called a Lua binding and can be created manually or by using our automatic Lua Binding Generator. See our paper Lua fast-tracks embedded web application development for more information.

Barracuda App Server Components List:

Web Server vs. Application Server: What’s the Difference?

As devices have become far smarter, faster, and reliably connected, so has our desire to take advantage of these advances by adding human interface options for real-time dynamic content manipulation in control, analysis, and the ability to refresh, repair, or replace functional attributes, using servers-side logic. See our Web Server vs. Application Server comparison table for more information.