"embedded" (not sure if anyone uses that term anymore) They certainly do. There's an entire industry that builds control software for network-connected devices

"embedded" (not sure if anyone uses that term anymore) They certainly do. There's an entire industry that builds control software for network-connected devices. These days you probably run an embedded web server and/or provide a network-accessible control protocol over something like TCP or UDP with separate software/app that runs locally on the user's device. Then on the back end you link to whatever functionality the device has rather than just storing everything in a database as a typical CRUD application would. There's a wide range of tools available for things like putting together a minimal Linux base and cross-compiling your code as well.