Customizable Web-Based System to Federate Smart Devices and Peripherals

Smart devices such as smartphones and tablets are increasingly essential tools to make our lives more convenient. Wearable devices and ambient devices are also getting popular and can easily access the Internet through smart devices. Although smart devices have incredibly advanced functionalities, their I/O is poor because of their small size. Peripherals are able to compensate for the shortcomings, but currently there is no unified methodology to gather and integrate given devices. We have developed a customizable Web-based system in which services in the Cloud can federate smart devices and peripherals. The proposed system uses Web based technologies to coordinate between cloud services and the devices at hand. The main benefit is that Web application developers can create an entire system since the configuration and operation of all devices are describable only in JavaScript. We have also separated the device functionality from the application logic, thus enabling parallel development. We implemented a prototype system using Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and found that it could be easily used to develop a system that emulates a POS terminal. The proposed architecture enables developers to flexibly utilize the Web of Things.