I Speak To Internet, Internet Returns Garbage

I asked my Arduino to connect to the Internet via wifi. Much to my excitement, it found my wireless router and assigned itself an IP address.

But I soon learned that talking to the Internet was the easy part. The difficulty was getting the Internet to listen.

Here is an example:

"Hello, Internet!" the Arduino exclaims. "Could you return me the website of the Guardian newspaper?"

"gÑÿ•ÿ•ÿ£ÿ¹ÿ5jLØ·mÓly-", replied the Internet.

Here is another example:

"Hello, Internet! Could you tell me the weather?"

"HQƒö)3Ì�4ƒ#LXlÙ," said the Internet. "�RÇ«Û7nÃ…S³›7gȾ³Ã˜#´lÚe#F­[6eÀ0�Ö-›nÈ™0Õ#&3gÌškÆ­–Û6nÔ: 166" (I felt encouraged by the 166 at the end.)

I performed much technical fiddleage, but got similar results. I was baffled. Eventually I decided to google it.

“I've got the same problem!” said a forum poster. “I've just spent seven weeks trying to fix it!” He had not fixed it, and he had wasted seven weeks.

Another forum poster had a similar experience. “Currently at wit's end and rapidly losing both hair and what remained of my sanity.”

This was bad news. One rule of this project is that I should finish with the exactly same amount of hair that I started with.

I did some further googling, to no avail. “Why don't you get a Raspberry Pi?” suggested an anonymous. “They're easy to connect to the internet.”

“You should get a Raspberry Pi”, said another.

So I have ordered a Raspberry Pi. I expect it has a similar battery life to an Apple Watch. But can you connect an Apple Watch to a hosepipe? I think I might finally be winning.