Re: Re: HA Object Model or Taxonomy?

[Gavin Sallery <gavin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Alan,

I think part of the reason that there is not an open, public model for home
automation is that many of the efforts in this area have been made by
companies who think that owning the object model is a way to give
themselves competitive advantage; all the commercial HA offerings must have
some sort of model underpinning them, but these are not open and so do
nothing to foster a community or even encourage entry into the home
automation market. However, it is not the object model which will make
people money, it's the availability of really neat and useful things which
can be done by networked home appliances - and the utility of any network
increases as the square of the number of communicating nodes (Metcalfe's
law). So to help home automation finally take off, we really need a model
which anyone can use in order that they no longer need to reinvent the
wheel for the basics, and can concentrate on the things which are really
cool!

In keeping with this approach: it is entirely right, proper, and a thing to
be celebrated that you are already thinking of uses to which the model
could be put! I most certainly do not have a problem with using the
potential model in your books, indeed if this project is to have any
utility then the more people who know about (and use) it, the better. I
would only ask that we try to keep the model as generally applicable as
possible, rather than focusing on an implementation which might lend itself
to use with microcontrollers. Though on that point - how are you planning
to tackle networking with the AVR devices? Last time I looked, getting a
TCP/IP stack working with them was still a bit fiddly (though of course
this is far from the only network implementation to be considered).

Cheers,

Gavin



On 18 Mar 2012, at 07:30, alan.trevennor@xxxxxxx wrote:

> Hi Gavin,
>
> Thanks for your response and proposal.
>
> First of all, yes, it's amazing that there is nothing like this for
the hobbyist. The Home Automation/Smart Home aspiration is well over 30
years old now (well, the computer-using version of it anyway) and Object
Oriented programming is probably, what? 20 years in the mainstream now?
Amazing that nobody has put together a truly public-domain object model and
ontology.
>
> It's good that you came to the conclusion that you had to invent your
own too 8-) the reason I posted my question here in the first place was
that I thought my extensive Googling must surely have missed something! I
had imagined that - for one example - the X.10 world would have had to
develop such a model, but although there is a mountain of X10 info around,
there doesn't seem to be any formal object model, only a protocol. I guess
that's probably because X10 pre-dates Oop?
>
> Thank you so much for offering to share and for starting the wiki, I
apologise for the delay in responding, I've been completely eaten up by a
work deadline for the last few days. Which brings me to my next point.
>
> Yes, it would be fantastic for us to group-develop a full model along
the lines you suggest and I am totally up for that, I have a start point
too, but only a simple one. However, I have to put one thing "out
there" & put my cards on the table before I participate.
>
> I am currently writing a book on AVR Microcontrollers, for publication
later this year. This is a book of general AVR projects with a whole lot of
background stuff on subjects like serial communication, prototyping
techniques, using AVR away from Arduino hardware, helper chips and so on.
Several of the projects in this book touch the HA area, and need
communication to a desktop or to one another, but only in a comparatively
simplistic way. So, luckily, a full HA object model is not a requirement
for this book, but I was expecting to be able to just instance something in
the public domain that existed and refer readers to the full details of
that, if they wanted a deeper dive into the subject. As you know, I didn't
find any such thing.
>
> Instead, I will now provide an outline of how an object model might
work, just at a basic level. So, I have drafted a short section on a
theoretical model that I have called SHOM (Smart Home Object Model) that
only fleshes out a little bit of the \fittings\illumination\lighting branch
of one possible model, by way of an example.
>
> Now, the main thing I need to make you aware of is this: I have
interest from a different publisher for another book that I will write
subsequently: This would be a book of AVR (note AVR, not Arduino) home
automation projects. Clearly, if we all cooperate together and if we
produce something worthwhile and if we contribute the work to the public
domain and if this second book of mine goes ahead (count the
"ifs"!) I would wish for the HA projects in that book to make
extensive use of the model we develop. So, what I'm saying is that my
participation would be conditional on the understanding that I would be
using the model in this way sometime in the future.
>
> If that's acceptable to everybody (Gavin, principally you, since it
seems like you may have already put a lot of work into this and kindly
offered to share it) then I am in. If you have a problem with this, then I
completely understand and no hard feelings at all.
>
> Best regards
> Alan T
>



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