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I have a few 'smart' relay boards on different sites. These boards have a ethernet connection and are running a built-in web server on TCP 8080. I can access them from the local network and control them via a browser.

To control these boards remotely, I could assign them a fixed local IP address, open TCP port 8080 on my router and forward it to that address. But this is a risky thing to do, off course. And I would have to do this on the different routers (from different IPSs) on each site and keep track of all these public IP addresses. (Via a dyndns service. Most routers are not VPN-enabled, afaik.)

Is there a better way using VPN-tunnels? I already have a Linux VPS running for other purposes and could install a Raspberry Pi on each location. All these Raspi's could connect to my VPS. And I would no longer need the dyndns. Maybe, I could also find a way to map the URLs for the different relay boards to a more human-friendly form. Like this: http://myvps.domain.com/site2/relayboard3

How can I achieve this? I could install OpenVPN on the VPS server and the Raspberry Pi's (one for each site). But how do I have to configure this? VPS in the role as VPN server and Raspi's as VPN clients? (I assume the gateway address from the relay boards has to change to the local address from the Raspberry.)

And do I need a VPN client om my Android phone to be able to browse to the relay boards or not?

What do I need to forward the http connections to the correct relay board? A proxy server?

solderiron
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    Welcome to StackOverflow! This question can generate a lot of opinion based answers and thus frowned upon. I would go with RPI device per location with saltstack used for access. slat-minions keep "connection" to the master server and you can execute any commands (to control relays via curl) on RPI devices anytime you need. – Maxim Sagaydachny Feb 26 '20 at 16:07
  • Maxim, thanks for your reply. I just had look at Salt and it's awesome to run commands on my Pi from the server, without forwarding TCP port 22. – solderiron Feb 26 '20 at 20:11
  • However, I don't want to use curl from the command line. I prefer to use a plain web browser (on my phone or laptop) to access the web-enabled devices on the same network as the Raspi. (I guess in the future, other types of devices with on-board webserver will be installed at the different sites.) – solderiron Feb 26 '20 at 20:21

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