API: Support a runtime-configurable API URL

[ETSells]

Description

The dashboard is currently hardcoded to use http://127.0.0.1:5000 as the API URL. We should have an option to change this in the dashboard itself (possibly through a new settings menu). The URL that is set for the API should be saved in the browser between page reloads, and should only default to 127.0.0.1:5000 or localhost:5000.

This will allow us to run the API on a separate machine to the dashboard, enabling multiple users to poll data.

Relates to: SunDevilRocketry/SDEC-API#14

[favillat]

I like this idea but correct me if I'm wrong @ETSells, but running an api instance on another machine would require us to deploy the API to some domain, are there any plans to do that? that is something that dashboard could look into with sdec team.

[favillat]

I guess we could also use a VPN and run an API deamon on the shop computer? tho idk how practical that would be

[ETSells]

No, it wouldn't. We would want the API to be available to other devices on the local area network, not the wide area network/open internet. This would just be devices on the same wifi network or connected to the same ethernet switch who could connect at http://192.168.0.xx:3000.

The idea here is that the API would run on one machine, but multiple clients could connect to that instance at a launch site to see the same data. This will be a very important feature for NLFS, as it will need to pull data from an SDEC-API endpoint to read some sensor data from the rocket's telemetry output.

[ETSells]

We could get fancy and try to get a router for field-deployment that can resolve DNS queries to "sdec.local" --> the IP that the api is running on, but that's secondary to the main concern of being able to have multiple machines ping the API.

[favillat]

instead of using a router we could always use a Tailscale network and that might be a little cleaner, but yea i get your main point, i fw it, definitely shouldn't be super hard to implement

[ETSells]

idk if it would be tbh. this would be a field deployment out in the middle of nowhere, probably without internet access, so we'd need some kind of actual network to do LAN communication between devices. For liquids with the labjack (at west and FAR), it'll probably be an unmanaged ethernet switch, but at traphx I'm not sure.