SUIT Remote Console Part

The remote console manufacturer provides control point bundle in order to be a part of SUIT gateway. We introduce the SUIT remote console part in this section.

Figure 3-7 SUIT Remote Console Part

In the architecture of SUIT remote console part as shown in Figure 3-7, the protocols or communication mechanisms between the bundle and users are proprietary which is great for remote console manufacturer. After service transformation by constructing bundle software to the SUIT gateway, the proprietary portion becomes standardized on SUIT gateway.

The bundle will first get AIAP-URC documents or metadata form the system, process the data and create user interface for presentation. Then it will work with the controller in the SUIT core part to fulfill remote consoles request. Following we’ll give some real cases.

The most general interaction service of a service-oriented infrastructure is web pages. If we want to construct a web remote console for our smart home, what does the bundle look like? The answer is pretty trivial. Http server is obviously the best choice. What we have to do is wrapping the http server in a bundle, and deploy the bundle successfully. Here the user is web browser, people operate the web pages from http server and they are able to operate every device connected to the SUIT system. About the user interface technology, the http server bundle retrieves the URC descriptions from SUIT core and generates the html source code for web client’s request of web pages. This is how we make web pages as remote consoles.

The population of mobile device owners is growing day by day. Almost every owns one or more handsets, so this may be a good choice to hold remote console software. What does the bundle for mobile device looks like? It may be Bluetooth server or 3G/GPRS server which depends on what kind of network protocols the mobile device supports. Take Bluetooth for example, we have to place a Bluetooth dongle at the SUIT server side. The Bluetooth will get local address and publish the Bluetooth service as it is the server. As the Bluetooth client, mobile device searches devices then searches services on each device to see if there is SUIT universal home domination service. Finally the mobile device gets the connection from the service recode it finds and starts to be the remote console. For 3G/GPRS handset without Bluetooth module, the client is likely to use socket program that gets connection from the

socket server bundle through the cellular mobile network. About the user interface technology, the server bundle retrieves the URC descriptions from SUIT core and generates user interface components for mobile client such as Forms, Lists, CheckBox…etc. This is how we make mobile phone as remote consoles.

Figure 3-8 MSN Remote Console

Using instant messenger as a remote console is our brilliant innovative idea. IM remote console manufacturer develops an instant messenger robot as a bundle hosts on the SUIT gateway. The job of IM robot is reporting appliances status to other IM client, accepting requests from IM client and invoking the actions. Figure 3-8 displays an example of MSN remote console. We wrote a MSN robot names “DCSLab House Keeper”, wrapped it as a bundle, and installed it to SUIT gateway. I added the MSN robot to the buddy list of my personal MSN client which I used to use. After this procedure, I can always see the Robot on my buddy list. Then I am able to open a dialog and talk to the MSN robot on the SUIT gateway. On the right hand side of the screen capture as you see, when I ask for home appliance list, the Robot shows me the available and operable appliance list. IR robot is listed at the third place of the list MSN robot just gave me. If I want to know more details about the

on the left hand side of the screen capture, now I can easily operate the IR robot. It seems quite convenient for end users to use IM remote console with any extra installation if they already an IM client, all they need to do is to add some robots as their friends.

The last one to introduce is IA remote console, IA here means intelligent agent.

Intelligent devices will be a big research issue in the future, and this may conduct into SUIT platform easily. Imagine that when you are driving, the device generates voice user interface to prevent you from not paying attention on driving. When you are in the meeting place which requires extreme silent then the intelligent agent generates visual user interface for you. All these features cab be down in out platform regarding the abstraction of user interface layer.

We can conclude this section that besides the integration of underlying home control, the user interface generation mechanism is more important in SUIT platform. Each remote console bundle gets AIAP-URC documents or AIAP-URC metadata from the URC engine in the core part of SUIT gateway. Then those bundles know how to present the user interface of the target appliance to the users.