Smart home at a finger tip: OSGi-based MyHome

This paper introduces MyHome, a framework of smart home by which household information is all at a finger tip. Through adopting Message oriented middleware (MOM) and open service gateway initiative (OSGi) technologies, MyHome offers reliable automatic operations, fault tolerant and configurable home automation, high extensibility and large scalability. In its design, MyHome system is composed of a residential gateway MyServer and Internet accessible GUI MyIcon and MyMobile. MyServer is used to provide services regarding home security, inventory tracking, facility management, GPS location recording and family care. Inherently an interactive and multitasking system driven by peripherals connected through wireless sensor networks, the overall MyServer architecture is designed with six core service modules operating on a MOM. Each of these modules is designed as an OSGi bundles and is implemented by a programming template utilizing event publish/subscribe messaging mechanism. To facilitate program demonstration, simulator and scenario editor are also developed. A successful implementation of the proposed MyServer is also demonstrated in an emulated home environment where peripherals are connected through ZigBee wireless sensor network with data integrated into a database. With these clearly defined service modules and pertinent infrastructure to integrate household peripherals, this paper presents a practical approach to the implementation of a smart home.