PhD Defense: Enabling Smart Homes Using Web Technologies
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Enabling Smart Homes Using Web Technologies Andreas Kamilaris PhD Defense Professor: Andreas Pitsillides NETworks Research Laboratory Department of Computer Science University of Cyprus December 2012
PhD Defense: Enabling Smart Homes Using Web Technologies
New technological advancements allow the Internet to penetrate in embedded computing. IPv6 envisions to merge the physical and the digital world, through the Internet. The Web of Things interconnects the expanding ecosystem of Internet-enabled embedded devices, by reusing well-accepted and understood Web principles. In this talk, we will present the development of a Web-based application framework for smart homes, supporting concurrent interaction from multiple family members. By employing intermediate request queues, associated with the physical devices of the smart home, our analysis shows that we can mask transmission failures and faults that occur in the wireless environment, thus enhancing the performance of smart home operations by means of fast retransmissions, load balancing and request priority techniques. In our analysis, we also derive formulas for estimating the response time of requests and for setting the request queue retransmission interval, an important design parameter of the system. In this way, reliability and timely responses from the devices are ensured. We demonstrate that, by using the Web as application layer, flexible applications for smart homes can be built, on top of heterogeneous embedded devices, with little effort. We address many issues related to Web-enabling household devices, from their local discovery and service description to the uniform interaction with them. Our technical evaluation indicates that the process of Web-enabling physical devices offers satisfactory performance, mainly in terms of response time and energy consumption, while modern Web techniques such as Web caching and event-based Web messaging can contribute in facilitating smart home operations. Through various case studies, we demonstrate that Web-based, energy-aware smart homes have the potential to provide flexible solutions to challenges such as energy awareness and conservation, and be smoothly integrated with the smart grid of electricity. Finally, this talk discusses some future research challenges, beyond the home environment, in which Web-based smart homes may constitute crucial elements in order to address them effectively.
Text of PhD Defense: Enabling Smart Homes Using Web Technologies
1. Enabling Smart Homes Using Web Technologies Andreas
Kamilaris PhD DefenseProfessor: Andreas PitsillidesNETworks
Research Laboratory Department of Computer Science University of
Cyprus December 2012
2. General OverviewUniversity of Cyprus1. Introduction - Problem
Statement - Motivation2. Building an Application Framework for
Smart Homes3. Web-Enabling Home Devices4. Using Request Queues for
Enhanced Performance5. Technical Evaluation6. Blending Smart Homes
with Online Social Networking7. Integrating Smart Homes to the
Smart Grid8. Beyond the Smart Home Environment9. Conclusion10.
Future Work 3. Introduction University of Cyprus Merging of
computing with physical objects. Physical devices becoming smarter.
Home appliances equipped with embedded microprocessors,
wirelesstransceivers, sensors and actuators. New automation
possibilities in smart homes. Technology disappears in the
background of residents lives. 4. Problem StatementUniversity of
Cyprus In an idealized vision of a fullyintegrated smart home, all
theoperations are efficiently controlled bya central application.
Proliferationofincompatiblestandards/protocolsused
byhardware/software manufacturers. The smooth integration of
appliancesfrom different vendors becomes a verycomplex process. 5.
Motivation: Internet of ThingsUniversity of Cyprus The Internet
penetrates in embedded computing. The Internet of Things envisions
a network of objects, where allthings are uniquely and universally
addressable, identified andmanaged by computers in the same way
humans can. 6. MotivationUniversity of Cyprus X10KNX
ZigBeeIPv6Network Size:2^82^162^162^64 per subnetData Rate:20b/s
9.6kb/s 20-250kb/s250kb/s...1Gb/sInterface:customapp-level
app-level UDP, TCP, solutionsgateway gatewayRESTful WebCost: low
highmediumlowInstallation Overhead:
lowhighlowlowConnectivity:lowmediummediumhighSecurity:
nonehighmediummediumInternet technology, utilizing IPv6, will
become the future standard in home automation.Matthias Kovatsch et
al., EmbeddingInternet Technology for HomeAutomation, in
Proceedings ofETFA, Bilbao, Spain, September 2010.Carles Gomez and
Josep Paradells. Wireless home automation networks: A survey of
architectures and technologies. IEEECommunications Magazine,
48(6):92{101, 2010. 7. Motivation: Web of ThingsUniversity of
Cyprus Interconnecting embedded devices in application level. The
Web of Things reuses Web principles to interconnectembedded
devices, built into smart things. The Web as a pervasive and
scalable platform.The WoT practice:1. Connect embedded devices to
the Internet, via IPv4 or IPv6.1. Embed Web servers on the
devices.2. Model their services in a resource-oriented way (REST).
8. Motivation: REST University of CyprusREST is a lightweight
architectural style which defines how toproperly use the HTTP
protocol as an application interface.REST Vs Big Web Services
(WS-*)A Resource-oriented Architecture is about four concepts:1.
Resources.2. Their names (URIs).3. The links between them.4. Their
representations (HTML, JSON, XML).Resources can be manipulated
with:1. GET to retrieve a representation of a resource.2. POST
represents an insert or update.3. PUT to alter the state of a
resource.4. DELETE to delete resources. 9. Thesis
ObjectiveUniversity of CyprusInvestigate the feasibility of
enabling trulyWeb-basedsmart homes, followingthe principles of the
Web ofThings, for achievinginteroperability, flexibility
andacceptable performance in homeenvironments. 10. General
OverviewUniversity of Cyprus1. Introduction - Problem Statement -
Motivation2. Building an Application Framework for Smart Homes3.
Web-Enabling Home Devices4. Using Request Queues for Enhanced
Performance5. Technical Evaluation6. Blending Smart Homes with
Online Social Networking7. Integrating Smart Homes to the Smart
Grid8. Beyond the Smart Home Environment9. Conclusion10. Future
Work 11. Requirements for Future Smart HomesUniversity of Cyprus
Support various interaction types (Ad hoc, pull, push). Uniform
access to heterogeneous home devices. Multi-hop wireless
communication, plug and play functionality. Reliable operation,
masking transmission failures. Flexible design, light
implementation. Direct access for residents to their home
environment. Concurrent, multi-resident support. Interoperable
programming interfaces for end user development of smart home
applications. Graphical user interfaces. Small waiting times for
simultaneous requests. Acceptable performance in terms of response
times and battery lifetime of devices. Scalability. 12. Embedded
Devices in the Smart Home University of CyprusI. Sensor Motes
Telosb sensor motes. Equipped with a 250kbps, 2.4GHz, IEEE
802.15.4-compliantChipcon CC2420 Radio, integrated on-board antenna
and a8MHz TI MSP430 microcontroller with 10 kB RAM. Equipped with
temperature, humidity and light sensors. Form a wireless sensor
network inside the smart home. 13. Embedded Devices in the Smart
Home University of CyprusII. Smart Power Outlets Ploggs Firmware
based on the ZigBee protocol. Forming a mesh metering network. High
accuracy of electricity measurements. Control of an electrical
appliance remotely (switch it on/off). External transducers for
whole-home measurements. 14. Building an Application Framework for
Smart Homes University of Cyprus 15. Building an Application
Framework for Smart Homes University of Cyprus
Synchronous/Asynchronous Operation 16. Building a Web-based Smart
Home University of Cyprus A Web cache is an intermediary between
Web servers andclients, monitoring incoming requests and saving
copies ofthe responses for itself. Works only for GET requests
using the expiration model fordetermining freshness of
resources.Gateway Web Cache(Web client) (Web cache)(Web server) 17.
Building a Web-based Smart HomeUniversity of Cyprus Adding a
Graphical User Interface HomeWeb Client ApplicationRestlet-GWT
XMLJSONWeb APIServer Application Framework Restlet 18. Building a
Web-based Smart Home University of Cyprus 19. Building a Web-based
Smart Home University of Cyprus Energy Awareness through a Web
Interface Device-level energy consumption information. Historical
comparison with previous days, weeks, months, years. Association of
electricity data with costs. 20. Building a Web-based Smart
HomeUniversity of Cyprus Smart Rules for Home AutomationIf the
illumination in the living room is less than 50% and thetemperature
in the kitchen is greater than 25 degrees Celsius,then turn on the
red led of sensor7 and the green led of sensor6. 21. Building a
Web-based Smart HomeUniversity of Cyprus Smart Rules for Energy
Efficiency If the illumination in the living room is less than 20%,
then turn off the television and the DVD player. 22. Building a
Web-based Smart HomeUniversity of Cyprus Web mashups are Web
resources that include content andapplication functionality through
composition of existing resources. Physical mashups exploit
real-world Web services, offered byphysical devices, combining them
using the same tools andtechniques of Web mashups.function check
{if [ $? -gt 24 ] ; thencurl -d "status=OFF" -X PUT
[serverAddress]/AirConditioner/Switch/fi}curl -s -X GET
[serverAddress]/Kitchen/Temperature/ $1check; 23. Building a
Web-based Smart Home University of Cyprusfunction getHttpRequest()
{ var xmlhttp = null; xmlhttp.open(GET, http:// [serverAddress]/
/touchatag/tags, true);xmlhttp.onreadystatechange = function()
{if(xmlhttp.readyState == 4 && xmlhttp.status == 200) { var
items = eval(( + xmlhttp.responseText + )); var secret_key =
"04:BA:4A:B9:23:25:80"; for (var i=0; i
