Design and Implementation of Media Content Sharing Services in Home-Based IoT Networks

The penetration ratio of broadband networks into residential areas increases rapidly by the wide distribution of Internet service providers and networks. People are able to distribute and play various media content with many types of networked multimedia devices for home multimedia entertainment in residential environments. This paper addresses a new idea of home-based IoT networks where home-networked devices are able to communicate with others in a friendly, networked manner instead of traditional manual configurations and wired cabling operations. Accordingly, this paper proposes a novel intelligent media distribution system based on a home-based IoT network. The design of this system integrates UPnP, face recognition, intelligent human-machine interface, and family database technologies. UPnP-compatible HNDs With UPnP, networked devices can discover neighboring devices in a network. Face recognition is incorporated and so provides the UPnP networked devices with the capability of identifying the operating user in front of them. When a user moves in a home-based network, the intelligent human-machine interface allows a user to enforce any media content to be distributed to or displayed onto the UPnP-based device nearby the user. Furthermore, this paper presents a prototypical development, as well as a real demonstration with experimental UPnP-based network devices in home networks. Therefore, the study in this paper enables a ubiquitous media distribution service in home-based IoT network environments.