Control of Information Appliances Using Instant Messaging

Many of the systems developed to date for controlling home appliances remotely from outside have used a web server as the interface between the home network and the users. Although the user interface (UI) that uses a web server offers many advantages, this approach requires a fixed IP (Internet Protocol) address, and does not have a push function. Moreover, until the user gets reconnected to the web server, he or she cannot know the result of a submitted order. In particular, internet-based applications using web browsers still require considerable time to execute the initialization process for acquiring state information on home appliances from the home server. To solve these problems, we propose an application for home automation that can efficiently control and monitor home appliances using an instant messaging system (IMS) with real time communication. The proposed system has all not only the advantages of the web server method, but also with additional advantage that the homeowner does not need to continually reconnect to the home server, and that the home server does not need to have a fixed IP address. Our application can be applied using middleware technologies.