Industry-first Smart Home Gateway functionality at BBWF

Serving as the central unit for device control and visualization of home status, EnOcean Alliance, Lantiq, Prosyst and Rockethome (the collaboration partners) have implemented a Smart Home Gateway. Reflecting the goal of HGI to establish standards for a common software execution environment, the Smart Home system supports different wireless standards, such as DECT ULE, EnOcean, Z-Wave and ZigBee, via open interfaces. In the future, such architectures will provide users the full range of choice to design connected home systems to meet individual needs.

Duncan Bees, Chief Technology and Business Officer of HGI, comments: “The smart home gateway platform is a key platform of interest, and we are tying together cloud components, APIs, and an abstraction layer that will allow applications to access multiple home networks."

The EnOcean Alliance have contributed several batteryless switch, sensor and actuator units. Working with harvested energy rather than battery cells, these devices use motion, light and temperature differences as their energy source. This allows smart home components which work maintenance-free and are highly flexible to install or to retrofit. The presented interoperable devices included a motion-powered switch from Debflex, a solar-powered temperature sensor from Afriso, a solar-powered window contact from Honeywell and a thermo-powered heating valve from Kieback&Peter. The demo was completed by a plug receiver from Diehl Controls which enables the user to control devices, e.g. a lamp, via EnOcean radio.

Lantiq provided the physical Smart Home Gateway, based on its AnyWAN EASY388 reference platform and complementary connectivity chipsets. The Lantiq platform supports the complete functionality of a Smart Home Gateway with its high-performance dual-CPU architecture, intelligent data stream offloading, support for Ethernet and multi-USB ports, and integrated WiFi 11n MIMO subsystem. Proven in millions of field deployments, the Lantiq platform can serve as both the Smart Home and Broadband Access Gateway.

ProSyst offers an HGI compliant stack for Smart Home gateways based on its own, highly optimized, embedded OSGi implementation. This stack provides support for various home protocols such as Z-Wave, ZigBee, EnOcean, KNX and DECT ULE, which are integrated through a device abstraction layer and a scalable home automation rule engine. The ProSyst solution includes several options for platform and application lifecycle management such as TR-069, OMA-DM and an efficient messaging protocol.

Rockethome provided the service delivery backbone for home automation and monitoring. The Rockethome Smart Home technology enables visualisation of complex data and control features in a user friendly interface that gives customers convenient and efficient control over their homes.

"The four-party demonstration shown at HGI’s BBWF booth is inspired by draft requirements set out by our smart home task force, and is an excellent instantiation of an approach that allows service providers to easily work with application providers to integrate new apps on their platform," adds Bees.