Controlling the WiFly
Despite the initial configuration of the WiFly being very easy and straight forward, things became much more difficult once we attempted to automate this process with our Arduino. It was not always known if the WiFly was in configuration mode where commands were sent to it, or data mode where commands were sent directly over HTTP. When opening a connection to the remote server, it could not be automatically known if a connection was already established or not.
Through some trial and error and lots of text parsing, we managed to put together a routine that covered every case and would eventually result in valid data being pulled off the web. The next step was to handle this data, and parse it into variables that we could manipulate elsewhere in the system. Once this was accomplished, our WiFly system was complete and ready to integrate into the project.