A Connected Home Platform and Development Framework for smart home control applications

Smart home automation technologies have been commercially available already, however the interoperability problems of different hardware and software components, the limited service scalability and the complexity of configuration and use prevent their mass adoption. In this paper we present a connected home platform and development framework for easy design, development and deployment of smart home services offering a wealth of new exciting smart home experience on top of existing broadband service bundles. The home controller is used to integrate connectivity with home devices of various home control technologies. The service platform embeds the use of OSGi technology in the home controller that enables the OSGi-literate engineer to quickly develop and deploy home services utilising the widely adopted automation technologies. The different home network subsystems are interfaced in a common way through the Network Adaptation Layer, a set of OSGi components known as ROCob. Following the ROCob API Specification, a developer may build various applications, such as presentation layer applications (e.g. a Web based UI), monitoring applications that collect data and send them to a backbone server, and other home control and pervasive applications.