The Phidgets Webservice appears to be in a closed, propritary form different than common webservice technology like e.g. SOAP and REST.

The service appears to be inaccessible from anything but the Phidgets provided libraries.

For accessing Phidgets devices, does there exist any webservice manifested in a common, strict, open technology like WSDL+SOAP or some well defined, ad hoc REST-based interface and which can be accessed by common clients on any platform?

Common, well-established authentication mechanisms would be appreciated too.

I could code such a service myself but I am reluctant to do so. I imagine such a service could have both a "poll" mode and a more lively "live" mode including a callback interface to the client.

Has this issue been addressed earlier and somewhere? Anyone have any good solutions?

No, we don't provide a standards-based webservice protocol. What application are you using where it's not possible to use one of our client libraries?

-Patrick

My approach was to combine webservices, including phidgets, at a higher level.

I think I just made a zeroconf (bonjour) browser into an operating system.

Video here not emphisizing phidgets but including them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OICdhxCAvsY&feature=plcp
please excuse my stammering.

The key to making this work for anything but an http web site (which all the beaglebone single board computer people seem to be doing) is for OEMs to provide a phidget like library to link with. So you don't have to worry about all the various IP protocols. You work with APIs. Brilliant!

I have no idea if this is practical. Just solving a problem I'm having.