Controlling Home Appliances through UPnP

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Controlling Home Appliances through UPnP
Damien Porter

• Home networking was until recently viewed only as
  a means of linking home computers together for
  file sharing
• New advances in smart device technology are
  causing this view to be revised by developers and
  users alike.
• Some of the old problems that prevent home
  networking from becoming as popular as it could
  still apply however such as device
  incompatibility and difficult set up .
• A group of companies and developers are coming
  together to define UPnP, a standard that will
  hopefully resolve these issues.

A simple home network controlling internal
lighting
Thermometer

• Universal Plug and Play is a standard which takes
  the no set up plug and play approach to computing
  and attempts to apply it to any device which may
  be integrated into a home network. This offers
  several advantages
• No difficult set up, just attach device and let
  it get started
• Devices locate resources on network
  automatically and monitor them for updates.
• This is an open standard that all companies can
  meet, so incompatibility problems could be
  lessened if not eliminated.
• All devices in the home may be monitored and
  controlled from the PCs in the house as they are
  all integrated.

PC
Control point
Heater
Control point
Air Conditioner
Devices are containers of services, and
communicate through one or more Control Points in
order to interact when services are called,
larger more complex devices sometimes act as
Control Points themselves

• For my project I am implementing virtual
  representations of UPnP devices that offer all
  the services and interactions of a real device of
  the same type. This should allow people to see
  and understand some of the potential interaction
  problems in UPnP before such devices are
  widespread allowing service incompatibilities to
  be resolved or at least considered prior to them
  having a large impact on systems. In order to do
  this I am writing these devices in Java using the
  eclipse environment and interacting using
  pre-existing control points for actual UPnP
  devices.
• These interaction problems generally only appear
  where 2 or more devices share an interest in the
  function of a third device and give it
  contradictory instructions
• There are multiple possibilities for resolving
  this issue but I feel that one based on a overall
  service priority system that rates the functions
  of the network, such as security, comfort and
  entertainment according to importance, allowing
  more vital services to override lesser ones but
  not the other way round is a viable and practical
  solution