What is arduino-router?

Arduino Router is a message relay service that lets multiple programs talk to each other through a central hub. Imagine a switchboard operator at a telephone exchange, each program connects to the router, announces what services it can handle, and then the router forwards incoming requests to the right program and sends the response back to whoever asked. The setup follows a star pattern: the router sits in the middle, and every client connects to it rather than to each other directly. When a client connects, it registers the commands it knows how to handle, for example, one client might register a "ping" command. Later, when another client sends a "ping" request, the router looks up who registered that command, forwards the request to them, waits for the answer, and passes it back. The router also keeps track of all active requests so that messages from different clients never get mixed up. This is particularly useful when you have a hardware device (like an Arduino board) connected via a serial port that needs to communicate with software running on a computer. The router can open that serial connection automatically and treat it like any other network client. So a web app, a desktop tool, and a physical board can all exchange messages through the same central hub without needing to connect directly to one another. Beyond routing, the project includes practical safeguards. If the serial port drops, the router retries automatically. Clients can reset their registered commands or disconnect entirely, which clears their methods from the router. There's also a configurable message size limit that rejects oversized messages to prevent the system from being overwhelmed. The project is written in Go and uses MessagePack, a compact binary format for encoding data, as its communication standard. It's licensed under GPL-3.0.