Design and implementation of an NFC-Based universal touch and control platform

Since home appliances have computational capabilities and network connectivity, most of these devices support wireless remote control. Unfortunately, these devices usually require separate remote controls with incompatible communication protocols, which raises the issues of management, maintenance, and pollution due to greater waste when such remotes are disposed of. This paper proposes an open NFC (Near Field Communication) touch and control platform (NTCP) to provide a convenient way for developers and users to exchange device profiles to achieve a universal remote control for home appliances and consumer electronic devices via a smartphone. In NTCP, an NFC-based Universal Control Protocol and an XML-based Touch and Control Markup Language (TCML) are designed to connect all the formulated elements and transfer data among the smartphone, tag, and NTCP server to facilitate universal control. Therefore, users can achieve a quick connection using a smartphone to control devices via the TCML-based profiles.