Smart Home Integration With External IoT Device Platforms and Services

The advanced smart home users are already looking for ways to integrate not only devices, but various third-party utility, information, and entertainment services with their smart home. On the other hand, the integration with external services and device platforms can be seen as a step toward building a smart city environment. Instead of waiting for smart city services to reach their full potential and knock on the door of the smart home, the integration with the smart home solutions would allow metropolitan area applications to reach the customers early, and would drive their further development. In this article, we propose the concepts of virtual devices and physical device twins, to expose the external services and device platforms to the users of a smart home system.