An overview on the openness of some important European domotic protocols and technologies. This presentation was made for the "Free Software" course of the Politecnico di Torino.

1. DOMOTICS:
AN OPEN APPROACH
Luigi De Russis
luigi.derussis@polito.it

2. OUTLINE
• What is “domotics”?
• Commercial technologies and their problems
• What if we want to build an “open” automated home?
• Dog: a domotic free and open source gateway
Domotics: an “open” approach 2

3. WHAT IS “DOMOTICS”?
• Composite word: domus + informatics
• Investigates
how to realize an intelligent home
environment
• Various naming: Smart Home, Ambient Intelligence, ...
• Nowaday, mainly viewed as Home Automation
• i.e., the
automation of the home, housework or
household activities
• Home automation, as a technology, is mature enough
for “real world” applications
Domotics: an “open” approach 3

4. FUNDAMENTALS
• To automate an house, you need a domotic plant
• Tipically, a domotic plant is composed by:
•a gateway
• some home devices (switches, sensors, etc.)
• You can turn a lamp on/off, raise/lower a shutter,
receive notification about the house temperature, ...
even remotely
Domotics: an “open” approach 4

5. ARCHITECTURE (1/4)
• Tipically, a domotic plant is composed by:
GW
A gateway
D D D D
Some devices
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6. ARCHITECTURE (2/4)
• We have three logical architectural levels:
GW
1. Hardware
D D D D
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7. ARCHITECTURE (3/4)
• We have three logical architectural levels:
GW
2. Internal
communication D D D D
between devices and with the gateway (e.g., command
transmissions)
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8. ARCHITECTURE (4/4)
• We have three logical architectural levels:
3. External
communication GW
D D D D
between the gateway and the “external” world (e.g.,
for configuration purposes)
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9. COMMERCIAL VS. DIY
SYSTEMS
• For
the sake of this presentation, we speak about
commercial and complete systems:
• available on the market, now
• distributed with hardware + software
• DIY systems exist, but typically they:
• strongly depend on the single developer capabilities
• are not spread enough
• are not interoperable and well-supported
Domotics: an “open” approach 9

10. COMMERCIAL DOMOTIC
TECHNOLOGIES
•A large and growing set
• The most popular:
• Konnex • Z-Wave
• BTicino MyHome • LonWorks
• X10 • EnOcean
• INSTEON • Universal Powerline Bus
• Zigbee HA
Domotics: an “open” approach 10

11. PROBLEMS
• They suffer three main problems, from an home
inhabitant viewpoint:
1. they do, more or less, the same things of
“traditional” plants
2. they are vertical systems (i.e., they do not
interoperate, since the gateways are not able to speak
to each other)
3. they are quite expensive
• As a result, few automated houses exist!
Domotics: an “open” approach 11

12. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
1. they do, more or less, the same things of “traditional”
plants
• new software applications can increase the set of
functionalities
2. they are vertical systems (i.e., they do not interoperate)
• they need some “high level” (software) gateway to
communicate
3. they are quite expensive
• perceivable benefits and cheap technologies will
help spreading over wider communities
Domotics: an “open” approach 12

13. WHAT IF WE WANT TO BUILD
AN “OPEN” AUTOMATED HOME?
• We speak about open domotics
• We want to add the automation to an existing home:
• by using commercial domotic systems, possibly a
“killer” technology
• available in Europe
• by using as more open technologies as possible
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14. COMMERCIAL SYSTEMS WE
CONSIDER...
• We consider only the most popular commercial
systems available in Europe:
• Konnex
• BTicino MyHome
• X10
• Zigbee HA
• Z-Wave
• byanalyzing their “openess” for hardware, internal and
external communication layers
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15. KONNEX (1/3)
• Konnex (KNX) systems are based on the homonymous
protocol that is:
• an OSI-based network communication protocol for
intelligent buildings
• an open standard
• International standard (ISO/IEC 14543-3)
• Canadian standard (CSA-ISO/IEC 14543-3)
• European
standard (CENELEC EN 50090 and
CEN EN 13321-1)
• China Guo Biao (GB/Z 20965)
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16. KONNEX (2/3)
• used by nearly 220 manufacturers, worldwide
• supporting several physical communication media
• the most used for the internal communication is
twisted pair
• the most used for the external communication is
Ethernet (also known as EIBnet/IP or KNXnet/IP)
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17. KONNEX (3/3)
• Konnex is a nice candidate for our use case:
• externaland internal communications are based on
open protocols
• but to use them you have to register (and pay!)
to the KNX Alliance
• the hardware is not open hardware and depends
from the manufacturers policies, since the protocol is
hardware-independent
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18. BTICINO MYHOME
• BTicino, a
traditional electric plant manufacturer, has a
domotic line named MyHome
• BTicino MyHome is a bad candidate for our use case:
• theinternal communication protocol is proprietary, and
the physical communication media is a twisted pair
• the
external communication protocol, named
OpenWebNet, is open, and the physical
communication media used is Ethernet
• thehardware is proprietary and the only manufacturer
is BTicino itself
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19. X10 (1/2)
• X10 systems are based on the homonymous protocol
that:
• is an international and open standard
• is used by several manufacturers, especially in the U.S.
• definestwo communication medias for the internal
communication
• power line
• radio frequence
• Ethernet or a Virtual Serial Port (through a USB
dongle, typically) is used for the external
communication
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20. X10 (2/2)
• X10 is a good candidate for our use case:
• theexternal and the internal communications are
open protocols
• thehardware is not open and depends on the
manufacturers’ policies
• However, from the user point of view, it suffers of
various problems, such as:
• commands getting lost
• unresponsive system
• various interferences
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21. ZIGBEE HA (1/3)
• ZigBee
HA systems are based on the Home
Automation profile of the Zigbee protocol, that:
• isa standard, low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh
network
• isused only by few manufacturers, for what concern
the Home Automation profile
• the internal communication uses the wireless
communication medium defined by the IEEE 802.15.4
standard
• a VirtualSerial Port (through a USB dongle, typically)
is mostly used for the external communication
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22. ZIGBEE HA (2/3)
• ZigBee HA is a nice candidate for our use case:
• the external and the internal communication
protocols are open, with more details available after
registering (and paying) to the ZigBee Alliance
• thehardware is not open and depends from the
manufacturers’ policies
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23. ZIGBEE HA (3/3)
• ZigBeeHA, hovewer, has some problems for open-
source developers since, for example, it is impossible:
• to combine a ZigBee implementation with GPL
licensed code
• to implement a GPL licensed ZigBee stack
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24. Z-WAVE
• Z-Wave is, similarly to ZigBee, a wireless network
protocol for home automation system
• Z-Wave is the worst candidate for our use case since:
• the internal communication protocol is strongly
proprietary (you need to sign a NDA and pay to see
it)
• the external communication protocol is proprietary
and a Virtual Serial Port (through a USB dongle,
typically) is mostly used
• not authorized open implementations exist
• the hardware is proprietary
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25. CONCLUSIONS (1/3)
• Forour use case, we could use three systems with their
protocols:
• Konnex
• X10
• ZigBee HA
• Konnex and X10 have an higher presence on the
market, right now
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26. CONCLUSIONS (2/3)
• None of them completely fits our requirements:
• Konnex requires to build a totally new electric plant
and it is quite expensive
• X10 suffers from different problems but it is more
flexible since it can exploit either power line or
wireless connection (no masonry work)
• ZigBee HA is a wireless protocol with some licensing
troubles and few devices are available on the market
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27. CONCLUSIONS (3/3)
• None of them is a killer technology. Then:
• many different installations
• different plants possibly coexist
• Native interoperability cannot be achieved
• Thesolution: use an higher level gateway, possibly open
source, like Dog
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28. DOG (1/2)
• Dog (Domotic OSGi Gateway) is
•a software gateway for controlling domotic
environments
• based on the Java OSGi (Open Services Gateway
initiative) framework
• with an high-level semantic device modeling
• supporting different domotic plant technologies
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29. DOG (2/2)
• expandable (also by you!):
• to support new domotic plants
• to have more (sophisticated) features through
standard OSGi components
• works
also with simulated enviroments (i.e., no “real”
automated home is needed)
• freely available on the Internet
• released under the Apache v2.0 license
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30. DO YOU WANT TO TRY?
Dog (source code and compiled version) with some
example applications is available on:
http://domoticdog.sf.net
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31. OTHER USEFUL LINKS (AND
REFERENCES)
1. Home automation page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation
2. Konnex: http://www.knx.org/
3. BTicino MyHome: http://www.bticino.com/
4. X10 page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)
5. Z-Wave: http://www.z-wave.com/
6. ZigBee HA: http://www.zigbee.org/Standards/ZigBeeHomeAutomation/Overview.aspx
7. Publications about Dog: http://elite.polito.it/dog-tools-72/publications
8. OSGi Alliance: http://www.osgi.org/Main/HomePage
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