SPOT: A smartphone-based platform to tackle heterogeneity in smart-home IoT systems

The recent advancements of IoT technologies, including broad penetration of Internet-connected smart appliances such as remotely controllable LED lights, thermostats, have changed the way we interact with the appliances in our homes and perform our daily activities. However, the significant heterogeneity in the emerging IoT devices has led to fragmented smart-home systems in which each single appliance vendor provides proprietary solution for appliance specific connectivity and user experience. To address this challenge, we present SPOT, a smartphone-based platform for multi-vendor smart-home appliances. SPOT consists of several novel mechanisms, including open device driver models using XML, which allow vendor-independent, user-driven device driver implementation and unified appliance control. To validate the flexibility and generality of our approach, we have built a SPOT prototype on Android platform that supports 8 real IoT devices in the market from different vendors.