Benefit of MHAP

7.1.1 Event-driven Home Automation in Heterogeneous Environment

The MHAP support event-driven Home Automation in heterogeneous environment through MOM. MHAP not only schedules operations of different appliances but also let the state change of one appliance trigger operations of the other appliances which belongs to any kind of home network. The MOM-based core of MHAP makes Home Automation event-driven even in Heterogeneous. An event is a type of MHAP message. Through independent channels from each adaptor and application router to MOM, messages can flow form one home network to another incompatible home network. Therefore, an event form an appliance can trigger another automatic operation of another appliance in anther home network. MHAP makes every smart appliance cooperate together, even the appliances are using incompatible home networking technologies.

7.1.2 Device and Protocol Independent Platform

MHAP is completely device and protocol independent. MHAP import every smart appliance as a corresponding abstract MHAP appliance through XML-based descriptors. In message flow of MOM, the appliances communicate with each other through device and protocol independent MHAP messages.

7.1.3 Reliable Fault Tolerant Home Automation

MHAP offers the reliable operation and the fault tolerant function. Reliable

operation meets the requirements for automatic operations of security. MHAP ensure that the operation remarked as “reliable” in descriptors will be done though the guaranteed message delivery introduced by MOM. The durable subscription and the persistent message mechanism of MOM guarantee the delivery of message involved in reliable operation.

Figure 7-1 region division provides the fault tolerant and reconfigurable Home Automation

On the other hand, when appliances or channels fails, the fault tolerant function of MHAP keeps the system effective uninterruptedly. MHAP’s region division according to topic naming limits the damages into certain region, and therefore the damages don’t affect the other parts of Home Automation. In MHAP, the appliances belong to a set of properties are viewed as in a region and the property includes the location, the device type and the adaptor defined in topic naming. Since each region

U

Fault region: MHAP limits the fault to the specific region.

The fault topic doesn’t affect the Home Automation operations of other regions.

: Fault topic

subscribe/publish the independent topic, the fail involved in a region will not affect the message flow of other regions. As Table 7-1 shows, when the channel of the X10 lighting appliances fails, the Home Automation operations of the other appliances still be finished. The damaged region uses channel “x10.room3.light,” and the other regions use the other independent channels to carry message flow. Therefore, MHAP limited the damage into the region of “x10.room3.light,” and the messages of Home Automation were still flowing freely. To take another example, when a channel of the fire alarm in room1 fails, the fire alarm in the other room can still publish event messages to the home security company though MHAP.

7.1.4 High Scalability

The MOM core makes MHAP scales well when the numbers of appliance increasing through one-to-many publish/subscribe messaging approach. On the other hand, a MHAP system can scale from home domain to Internet domain. Because the MOMs are able to cross sub net and connect to each other. The messages in one MHAP gateway can pass to other gateway outside home and push to Internet services.

Such scalable characteristic makes the automation scope of MHAP extends from a home to a larger scope such as a building or campus. The components participate the automation can not only be appliances or sub systems at home but also Internet services.

7.1.5 High Extensibility

The infrastructure layer and MOM core guarantee the high extensibility of MHAP.

MAHP consists of services over the infrastructure layer. The infrastructure uses OSGi to manage the life cycles of services, to update or install service through Internet and to check dependencies among service bundles. For example, when a new appliance is plugged in, the MHAP will check if there is appropriate adaptor for it. If there is no

appropriate adaptor in MHAP gateway, the MHAP can get it through Internet. The user may also assign the URL of the adaptor service by himself and then the MHAP will install and activate the service dynamically. During all the processes such as plugging in the appliance, installing services or activating services, the current automation is not affected. The MHAP infrastructure layer guarantees that the service is activated or deactivated dynamically. Furthermore, when the user add a new appliance and configure a new rule related to both the appliance and old appliances, the operations of existing Home Automation doesn’t need stopping or suspending. In MAHP, an appliance communicates with each other through message flow between each independent channel and MOM provider. The existing appliances subscribe and publish it own topics through adaptor services, therefore the new appliance does, too.

7.1.6 Easy to Use

MHAP offers an easy-to-use way to configure Home Automation. MHAP is device and protocol independent. Therefore, the user can configure the appliances with the same way even if the appliances supports different home networking technology. The MHAP separates Home Automation into rules and centralize the settings and configurations. Therefore, the user can configure Home Automation through editing rules of MHAP without multiple processes loading each macro program to each smart appliance.