CEBus Industry Council adopts a new data model for use in the Home Plug & Play Specification.

On Monday February 22nd, the core team of Interoperability Technical Committee established by the CEBus Industry Council (CIC) voted unanimously on the acceptance of a new data model for use in the Home Plug & Play specification. The data model is called the "System Resource Data Model" or SRDM and was contributed to the CIC by SMART Corporation. The data model will be the foundation of a new release of the Home Plug & Play specification which will probably be labeled version 2.0.

The Systems Engineering group of SMART Corporation recognized problems with the original model used in the current Home Plug & Play specification when they began to apply the model to new product development. Recognizing that the Home Plug & Play specification offered significant hope for true product interoperability to the home automation industry, SMART's systems engineering group decided to invest the time necessary to map out an improved model. The goal was to define a data model that would support tool-based configuration of home products as well as true plug and play capability. The SRDM utilizes the object-oriented Common Application Language (CAL) originally introduced as part of the CEBus protocol's application layer. CAL has since been modified so it can be protocol neutral. The "generic" version of CAL is published by the Electronics Industries Association as part of EIA-721.

The new data model revolves around the realization that products in the home have one or more resources that can be shared on the home network. These resources are defined as part of the Home Plug & Play specification. Products can also 'subscribe' to the resources shared by others. The sharing of resources and subscription to shared resources is the core concept of the SRDM. Users can influence resources within the system by making 'requests' to affect the resource.

The model was the foundation to the development of the House Scene Context that, according to Brian Baker, an employee of SMART Corporation and a member of the CIC's core team, will be the cornerstone to 'plug and play' interoperability that so many have promised and have yet to deliver. Through support of House Scenes, any number of products can be commanded to synchronously transition to a programmed operating state with a single command sent over the communications medium. The system reliability is improved by the use of a single command and precious network bandwidth is preserved. There is no limit to the number of products that can be members of a given House Scene. The operating state of each device is captured by the device at the moment it joins the House Scene. This state of operation can be as simple as the brightness level of a light or very complex, such as the exact settings of an A/V system fine-tuned to play your favorite song just how you want to hear it.

For more information about the SRDM, House Scenes and their collective contribution to home automation interoperability, contact CEBus Industry Council at http://www.cebus.org/contact.htm