I wrote some Python to run on an OpenWRT (MIPS-based, 400MHz) router that interfaced with an Xbee radio and ran a web interface. I quickly discovered that what

I wrote some Python to run on an OpenWRT (MIPS-based, 400MHz) router that interfaced with an Xbee radio and ran a web interface. I quickly discovered that what I expected to be IO-bound was in fact CPU-bound - reformatting the data and all the related text operations were fast enough after optimization, but only by a hair. Our solution was to switch to a dedicated ARM board (beaglebone) attached to the router. But I'm definitely going to take a look at using a compiled language now, as the codebase is still very small.