Computer appliance

Abstract: A home control and automation system and method. The system generally includes one or more wireless remote controls, a plurality of appliances (including network enabled appliances and traditional legacy appliances in the exemplary system), associated control centric devices, and associated content centric devices. Various methods for control and operation of appliances in the networked home control and automation environment are disclosed. Specifically, methods are disclosed which enable advanced home control features such as location based control setup and operation, network enabled legacy appliances and system integration, save and recall capabilities for appliance and media states, generic command based appliance controls, dynamic/complex macro command generation, and Internet based control capabilities from remote locations are disclosed in conjunction with the system of the current invention.

Abstract: An interactive interface facilitates the setting of preferences and other programmable parameters of an appliance. The interface is hosted by a server on a global computer network. The appliance owner initiates a connection to the server and is presented with a graphical user interface for setting the preferences and features of the appliance. Once the desired settings have been made, they are downloaded to the appliance either directly from the server or the appliance owner's computer or indirectly using a portable transfer device.

Abstract: A network appliance is capable of remote booting and obtaining its configuration information from a source located far away. The network appliance can be shipped to a business location or office environment without requiring a local boot server in that location or environment and without requiring the presence of a person who is familiar with and highly skilled in configuring the appliance. The invention allows for booting and the obtaining of configuration information, and therefore allows for the functioning of the appliance, regardless of whether there is a local server in the local network environment, such as a DHCP server or a boot server, that has been set up and configured to provide to the appliance the booting and configuration information it requires. Self-organizing distributed appliances (SODAs) according to the invention augment the Internet by providing a self-organizing network that efficiently distributes big data items, i.e., data items that cannot be downloaded timely (on demand) over today's networks. One application of self-organizing distributed appliances is the distribution of high-quality video (a half-hour MPEG-1 movies is about one Gbyte). The SODA network alleviates network bottlenecks.

Abstract: This paper presents the design and implementation of a Java-based automation system that can monitor and control home appliances via the World Wide Web. The design is based on a stand alone embedded system board integrated into a PC-based server at home. The home appliances are connected to the input/output ports of the embedded system board and their status are passed to the server. The monitoring and control software engine is based on the combination of JavaServer pages, JavaBeans, and interactive C. The home appliances can be monitored and controlled locally via the embedded system board, or remotely through a Web browser from anywhere in the world provided that an Internet access is available. The system is scalable and allows multi-vendor appliances to be added with no major changes to its core. Password protection is used to block unauthorized users from accessing the appliances at home. If the Internet connection is down or the server is not up, the embedded system board still can control and operate the appliances locally.