Appreciate the suggestions! In my situation the OS is wired and in close proximity to my server thus the latency is almost nothing between the two. So far, I have noticed no problem in speed to be honest with you although I completely understand where you are coming from. I will consider using a database/cache but I really wanted to avoid it. Just to be clear my server already runs MySQL for other services so it would be no problem to use a database, personally. The way I see it, if the app is going to lag sending commands (waiting on the OS to send command) then it is probably okay to wait for it to load although for me personally the web app seems very responsive/fast.
For my sake, have you tried the web app and if so are you experiencing lag? Would definitely help the direction I take the web app in. I will be honest though, I built the app for my father (Father’s Day is coming up soon after all) and he seems very happy with it (he even said it’s too responsive haha he was referring to the flip switches though) which is all that matters to me. But, if there is a problem I can fix I would be glad to!