Novel Display and Control for IoT-Based Home Automation

Abstract

Home automation systems have long been dependent on a permanent central controller, which has many problems, but a significant barrier to eliminating this controller is its ability to supply user interfaces to display the status of devices and control them. This paper proposes a novel protocol which allows any device or several devices, such as a smartphone, to control many devices from any manufacturer in one application in a plug-and-play manner without a central controller. Current approaches to home automation do not offer this functionality, requiring many applications from many manufacturers. The proposed novel protocol uses a standardised dictionary of UI elements and a minimalist XML device description that describes not only the UI layout for a device but also the device’s capabilities and the control procedures for the device. This light-weight all-in-one XML description is a novel combination of display, capabilities, and control and is ideal for the highly contested domestic 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi space. This is achieved without the need for a permanent central controller or an Internet connection and together with other protocols allows the elimination of the permanent central controller.

A three tier rapid mass programming method

“…Currently, for networking applications like IoT or WSN the two main options currently available for programming devices are simple wired programming and over the air programming. Wired programming is a one device at a time process which is very slow and requires a lot of effort to keep track of more than a few devices and which version of the code they are running, it is often used for small scale network testing [2,3] Wired programming is often preferred for simple prototyping as the network is very small often only a one or two devices. When it comes time to test a larger network many will opt for models and simulations [4,5] but setting this up can be as involved, or even more so, than the protocols being investigated and the cost for specialised software can be prohibitive.…”

“…When it comes time to test a larger network many will opt for models and simulations [4,5] but setting this up can be as involved, or even more so, than the protocols being investigated and the cost for specialised software can be prohibitive. Furthermore, this approach can easily miss affects and phenomena not predicted by the researcher, so for this reason many still prefer real-world testing on hardware but forgo large scale testing [3,6,7]. Many of these papers offer little or no discussion of the methodology used to program their devices.…”

Iot Status Communication for Home Automation

“…1, thus redistributing the responsibilities of the PCC and maintaining overall functionality. To date we have demonstrated that this approach can successfully and securely join IoT devices to a home Wi-Fi network [1] and then discover those devices [2].…”