Home automation, as a model of pervasive computing, is progressively becoming substantial for people homed in developed societies
With the proliferation of the usage of household electronic and electrical appliances, numerous data and multifarious control slevy cumbersome burden on residential home automation control units, making it expensive and difficult for the users to autonomously install, control and monitor the home automation system. The concept of Home Automation as a Service, based on cloud computing, assists shrinking residential computing workload and therefore making home automation more convenient, flexible, energy efficient and less expensive.
Furthermore, cloud-based Home Automation as a Service would readily endow the users the ability to remotely control and monitor their home automation system in real-time, from anywhere, via the Internet
Home automation is an umbrella term used to describe the use of specific automation techniques in private homes for enhanced convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security of the residents.
Prevalent techniques used in home automation include control of lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, appliances, multi-media home entertainment, security surveillance and other systems
With the vast number of the household electronic and electrical appliances used in modern homes, the undertaking of home automation systems has become extensive and hefty.
Home Automation as a Service can simplify this scenario by connecting each sub-system of a home automation system directly to the cloud, and thus not only reduce the setup and maintenance cost by eliminating the need of specialized gateway and web server in each household, but also enable Home Automation as a Service providers to deliver advanced automation services to the home automation system.
Multi-user Home Automation as a Service must be necessarily based on the standard cloud computing model, in which services are made available to the general public over the Internet as long as they use the specified web application programming interface (API).
Cloud computing refers to the online services provided over the Internet together with the hardware and software infrastructure of the data centers that offer those services. The services offered by existent cloud providers can be broadly categorized as Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service.