UI Simple

Revision as of 18:30, 22 August 2010

MIOS is a lightweight home automation system. The 'brain' of the MIOS software is the back-end, the engine, which runs stand-alone on a variety of internet-connected devices, such as PC's, Mac's, Wi-Fi access points, and dedicated home automation gateways. MIOS also includes a portal at mios.com, which acts as secure relay to MIOS systems that may be behind firewalls. Users can register for an account at mios.com, and that account can be linked to one or more MIOS systems to provide the user remote access to his MIOS system from anywhere. It is easy to control a MIOS system with simple http get's (normal internet requests). The URL you will open is generally data_request?id=xxx, where xxx is some sort of request or control command.

This document describes how to create a simple user interface to control a MIOS system using the simplified lu_sdata (LuaUPnP Simple Data) request. This document describes a simple control-only user interface, meaning it let's the user run scenes and control devices, but does not provide any means to change configuration or do advanced tasks. Whatever device is running the user interface (cell phone, web page, television, etc.) will be referred to as the "controller", and the MIOS engine, or system, that is being controlled by the controller is the "engine".

You can test out all the commands a normal web browser. For example, if your engine is on the same local network as your web browser, and your engine has the IP address: 192.168.2.150, you can view the status of all scenes and devices by opening this link in your browser: http://192.168.2.150:3480/data_request?id=lu_sdata and if you want to turn on device #5 you open this link in your browser: http://192.168.2.150:3480/data_request?id=lu_action&DeviceNum=5&serviceId=urn:upnp-org:serviceId:SwitchPower1&action=SetTarget&newTargetValue=1

Locating the engine

The first thing the user interface should do is find the engine on the internet. There are 2 different ways to control an engine:

1) Directly, using an IP address, where the engine is either on the same local area network as the controller or has a static IP or port forward that's publicly accessible from the internet, such as in the example links above.

2) Through one of the MIOS secure forward servers, which acts as a relay to an engine that may be behind a firewall. The URL is identical except that instead of using the IP you use a mios forward server followed by the /username/password/serial_number, where the username/password are from the user's mios.com account that he linked to his engine, and serial_number is the unique id of the engine. So, assuming you want to turn on device #5 on engine #10266 and the user linked it his mios account with the username "john" and password "tokyo", you would open this URL (note it's identical to the URL above): https://fwd2.mios.com/john/tokyo/10266/data_request?id=lu_action&DeviceNum=5&serviceId=urn:upnp-org:serviceId:SwitchPower1&action=SetTarget&newTargetValue=1

Because method #2 is much slower than method #1 when both the engine and the controller are on the same network, it is generally preferred to use method #1 when the controller is in the home, and method #2 when the controller is away from the home and needs to talk to the engine through the homeowner's firewall. If you are putting your UI in something that is only on a local network, like a TV, and you do not want to give the user the ability to control an engine outside the home, you may only implement method #1. If the UI is running on something that a mobile phone that has NO wi-fi and can only connect through the mobile network, then you may want to implement method #2 only. Normally, though, a user interface should be able to use both method #1 and method #2.