Novel protocols eliminate the central controller in home automation

Home Automation is not a new idea. Standards and commercial systems have been developed and available for nearly 50 years! With recent developments in wireless communications and embedded processors, the capacity and availability of Home Automation should be all the more prevalent. Despite this, the ubiquitous fully-integrated Home Automation Systems (HAS) that many have been expecting, are as yet unrealised. This is not because of a lack of availability. As has been noted, systems have been available since the 1970s, and today many manufacturers are offering smart devices. So why are smart homes not everywhere? In short, because of the near-universal dependence on the Permanent Central Controller (PCC). These PCCs encourage expensive, proprietary, complex and inflexible systems, which at best, leave users hesitant to invest in a smart home and at worst, lock them out completely.

The research presented in this thesis has eliminated the need for a PCC (including cloud based solutions) in HASs for the first time. This has been achieved by identifying the key responsibilities of the PCC and redistributing them within the System by the use of newly developed novel protocols. This work has resulted in 8 peer-reviewed publications - 3 Conference papers and 5 Journal papers.

The first Research Question identifies the need to support joining devices to the HAS network in the absence of a PCC. Early work identified and extended existing work enabling joining of devices using the hotspot feature of modern smartphones. This work was initially published by the author as part of the International Telecommunications and Network Applications Conference (ITNAC) in 2016. Further analysis and evaluation of this work, published at the Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy in 2017, highlighted the narrowed market share created by dependence on devices supporting a hotspot feature. That analysis then informed a re-orientation of the protocol to form a new and novel Joining Protocol. Taking advantage of the increased affordability and accessibility to hotspot functionality on smart devices, for example the popularity of the ESP-8266 family of chips, this protocol offers universal compatibility with any Wi-Fi enabled devices such as PCs, tablets, smartphones and even smartwatches. This new design was published at ITNAC 2017 and marked the elimination of the PCC for Joining in Home Automation Systems.

The second Research Question considered the responsibility of the PCC for the discovery of devices on the HAS network. In answering this question, a new and novel Discovery Protocol has been implemented and tested. This work was published in the International Journal of Automation and Smart Technology in 2019. In order to test this protocol under realistic conditions and loads, a novel testbed and mass programming technique was developed and made publicly available, along with its publication in the MethodsX Journal in 2019.

The final Research Question posed by this research aimed to replace the PCC in its responsibilities for communications within the HAS, primarily in relation to the Display and Control of end devices. The output of this work has produced and demonstrated several key protocols to enable multiple end-user devices to monitor and control devices in a HAS, without dependence on a PCC. Communication of device status was initially considered in a conference paper presented at ITNAC 2018 and expanded in a publication in International Journal of Computing in 2019. Finally, the work implementing the User Interface (UI) Display protocol was published in the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy in 2020.

All the novel protocols proposed in this work have been integrated into reference libraries that are open source and compatible with Android, iOS and Electron (for cross-platform PC/Tablet devices). These libraries are accompanied by reference implementations that demonstrate the successful operation of these novel protocols together. This allows for a fully functioning HAS in which the PCC is completely eliminated and should leave the way clear for low cost, simple, flexible and open source HAS that would allow for the ubiquitous uptake of smart homes.