[maemo-developers] N800 as a home automation/monitoring remote

[From: David Greaves]

Jussi Kukkonen wrote:
> David Greaves wrote:
>> Surely uPnP would go on the HA server? (the one with the hardwires too)
>> The N800 should just be a client - then the server exposes a view on the
>> hardware (so, for example, it can control multiple actions like lights on,
>> curtains close).
> 
> UPnP is basically a networking protocol that two or more devices use to
> communicate over. Obviously all of those devices need to implement the
> protocol, doesn't really matter if we're talking about a "client"
> (control point) or a device that provides services.

It depends; from a design PoV I think you would not want your N800 talking to
your light switches over uPnP.

Otherwise you kinda have your N800 'discovering' random uPnP devices to talk to
and not being able to talk to X10 or cbus devices. Many of these HA protocols
are not wireless.

No, I think you want a consolidation server (HA server, MrHouse) which then
exposes a nice structured view of the HA devices via some message passing nw
protocol - like CORBA/gconf.
Keeps the client lightweight yet able to take advantage of the touchscreen and
tablet form factor.

David