Consumer Electronics Association Standardizing Interoperability for the IoT

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The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), LonMark® International, and the UPnP® Forum are collaborating on new CEA initiative to help standardize interoperability for the IoT.  CEA is looking for participants for collaboration. Together work is in process to develop an interoperability lexicon establishing device descriptors, or as LonMark calls them "profiles" to help foster greater vendor interoperability. Building the lexicon is the first step toward the development of a standard for XML device descriptions. CEA is seeking input from LonMark’s members to build upon the CEA 709.6 (LonMark Profiles, SNVTs, SCPTs, Enum Types, SPID) standard to create a lexicon for home automation interoperability.

For those of you who have tried to create a smart home or develop an app with devices with multiple vendors, networks and protocols, you know how difficult it is. If all the devices come from a single vendor they probably work well together. If all the devices use the same protocol they maybe interoperable as long as the manufacturer hasn’t added a feature that was not already standardized by the protocol developers. Unfortunately, most consumers buy individual products or systems and only later try to tie them together to create a smart home. That’s a challenge even for a professional installer and nearly impossible for the average consumer. In recognition of the problem, and in its role as a leader in consumer electronics standards, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has begun a new effort to simplify the task.  

The group, titled Interoperability Using Standardized Device Descriptions, is developing a standard that manufacturers can use to describe how to communicate with their devices. A manufacturer following the standard will be able to create an XML device description that application developers and those designing bridges and gateways can download greatly simplifying the task of developing an API specific to that device.

A major part of this work is to create a standard lexicon or vocabulary to allow the mapping of device types, functions, data values and ranges, etc., that often vary from protocol to protocol  to a standard set of well defined terms. For example, one protocol may set a lighting level using a "dim level" while another calls it an "analog variable". Each may have a different range of settings with one using a percent (0-100) and the other using a range from 0-200. Using XML these different terms and values can be mapped to a common set of terms so the developer doesn’t need to do the job manually.

Both the lexicon and the device descriptions will be stored in an online registry that can be continuously updated. Manufacturers would be able to post their descriptions allowing developers to download them. If the lexicon does not include a suitable term the manufacturer, industry alliance or even an individual would follow the standard, or more likely an XML schema based on the standard, to create a new lexicon entry in the registry that can be used by anyone else. Each lexicon entry and device description would be "signed" by the author or authoring organization so anyone can see its origin – a kind of open source lexicon and device description for IoT devices. By separating the standard from the registry new additions would not have to wait for the standard to be revised. The standard is only there to define how to add to the lexicon and create the XML device description.

Although approaches similar to this have been attempted before, none of them have achieved much success, which begs the question "why will this effort be different"? First, CEA has a long history with home networking and in particular home automation networking. Second, we are not trying to choose winners from among the various protocols. Instead we are looking to create a lexicon that is inclusive and mappable to any protocol and XML schema that can describe most any device. Third, rather than standardizing the lexicon and the descriptions, we are standardizing how to create the entries to the lexicon and how to write the description in a way that will support any protocol. We will create a relatively complete lexicon based on a number of different sources as a starting point and then allow new entries to be made as needed. Finally we will create a registry for the entries that anyone can access, with password protection for the device descriptions if a manufacturer or the licensor of a protocol want to control access to their entries. For example, some licensed protocols only allow XML descriptions to be posted on their own servers. In those cases the device description would simply include the basic information such as make, model, manufacturer, etc., along with a URI pointing to the licensed server where additional details would reside.

For this effort to succeed we need participation from manufacturers and those familiar with the various protocols to join the effort.  At this point we have excellent representation from two of the groups with the largest deployments in the market: LonMark® International, which defines and certifies interoperability for the LonTalk protocol with tens of millions of installed devices worldwide and the UPnP® Forum, which is deployed in over 3 billion consumer devices around the world. This is a great starting point but we need more input from manufacturers with experience across multiple devices and protocols. The payoff is that your devices will be able to show up on any application as soon as your device or the application hits the market. You will have far fewer customer service calls due to features that don’t ‘play nice’ with other devices and applications. Your engineers will spend far less time holding hands with developers trying to integrate your devices into their apps. And you will have far more satisfied customers telling their friends about that great new product they bought that worked seamlessly with their great new app.

To get involved in this effort please contact standards@CE.org. The group is the Interoperability Using Standardized Device Descriptions Working Group, also known as R7 WG17.