I feel the same way (that ethernet is a perfectly good way of moving data around), so I created this a while back as a side project: https://github.com/mfass

I feel the same way (that ethernet is a perfectly good way of moving data around), so I created this a while back as a side project: https://github.com/mfassler/eFirmata Basically, I wanted USB, but I wanted much longer cable-lengths than USB, so I used ethernet.