As many cross-industry manufacturers such as home appliances, furniture, and the Internet continue to enter this market, smart home products are becoming more and more abundant, but because of the certain competitive relationship between brands, they are basically interconnecting products of their own brands or alliances. . Since the standards have not yet been unified, the current situation that different brands and products of different categories cannot be interconnected will continue to exist in the short term.
Smart home products are not only hardware products, but also distributed data nodes. The subsequent application value of big data is still incalculable. All brand manufacturers hope their products will become the entrance to form an ecosystem. In this era when data is king, every manufacturer does not want to easily hand over user data. Therefore, there is still a way to go to truly solve the interconnection problem.
However, based on the current development of the smart home market, home appliance manufacturers, cloud platform manufacturers, and ecological chain companies are all trying to use different methods to solve the problem of interconnection.
1. Home appliance manufacturers
Represented by Haier, Haier has cooperated with many outstanding partners in the U+ platform around the world to build a full-scenario intelligent ecosystem for product interconnection. Recently, at the 2018 AWE exhibition, Haier launched the “4+7+N†full-scenario customization concept, which aims to solve the problem of interconnection, integrate the products of different brand clusters under the group, and build Haier's smart system. But at the same time, Haier is a home appliance manufacturer. Considering the company's genes and interests, this open platform cannot solve all problems.
2. Cloud platform vendors
For example, domestic Alibaba, JD, Baidu, Tencent, Huawei, and foreign Amazon, Apple HomeKit, Google, Microsoft and other cloud platform vendors have built open ecological platforms to support access to various products for interconnection. For example, Huawei has launched a set of open platforms based on Hilink protocol, routers, and chip systems, which have now been connected to products from brand manufacturers such as Midea, Haier, Op, and Skyworth.
artificial intelligence
In addition, some industry players plan to solve this problem fundamentally. IFTTT is an example.
IFTTT is a network automatic link service that combines the open functions of various cloud service platforms to allow users to customize the automatic services they want. For example, users can create an automatic service on IFTTT with the content: "When the Nest Thermostat When it detects that the temperature is 38 degrees, turn on Samsung’s air conditioner.†In this way, two products of different brands and categories are connected.
3. Eco-chain company
Xiaomi has come to the forefront of the world in this regard, and Xiaomi has established the Xiaomi ecological chain with mobile phones as the core. As of now, Xiaomi
IoT
The platform has more than 85 million networked devices and more than 10 million daily active devices. The Xiaomi IoT platform is the world's largest intelligent hardware IoT platform, and the products in the platform can be interconnected.
In addition to Xiaomi, domestic Alibaba, Huawei; foreign Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. are all doing the layout of the ecological chain, at least the products in the ecological chain can be interconnected.
As there are many brands of smart home products and interconnection involves the interests of many manufacturers, in the long run, it is still necessary to formulate industry standards through mandatory methods at the national level. Of course, it is not ruled out that full competition of market technology to form industry standards will ultimately solve this fundamental problem.
Multi-protocol gateway helps integrate smart homeThe smart multi-protocol gateway provides a port (WiFi, Ethernet) to connect to the cloud platform, so that devices that cannot be connected to the Internet (ZigBee, BLE, NFC, Thread, RFID) have a function that can connect to the cloud platform through WiFi or Ethernet access to the network is a good entrance to integrate smart homes.
However, this method currently treats the symptoms rather than the root cause, and does not fundamentally solve the problem of interconnection and interoperability of smart homes. However, manufacturers of various brands can use smart gateways that support multiple protocols to integrate and solve the interconnection problem step by step.
At present, hundreds of smart homes are contending, and most of each manufacturer has its own cloud service platform, but this also results in different communication protocols. The products of manufacturer A can only run on the cloud platform of manufacturer A, while the products of manufacturer B cannot be accessed. Vendor A’s cloud platform cannot communicate with Vendor A’s products. To solve this problem fundamentally, unless the major manufacturers are willing to sit down and discuss and develop a communication standard to connect to the cloud platform, or open a relative API for neutral cloud service providers to interface, so that different brands, Different types of products can communicate with each other to achieve true interconnection.
The control of smart home products and the realization of smart scenarios require each brand manufacturer to provide the corresponding software interface, formulate a unified communication protocol, and realize the intelligent linkage of different manufacturers/different functional products under the guidance of artificial intelligence technology (AI). .
Technical challenges of smart gateway designAs the smart gateway integrates multiple wireless protocols, it needs to implement multi-protocol conversion and solve the problem of radio frequency interference; in addition, with the continuous enhancement of gateway functions, it is necessary to continuously introduce new technologies (voice recognition, security encryption).
In addition to the ZigBee-to-WiFi light gateway solution, World Peace Group is also developing an intelligent gateway based on the NXP i.MX6UL MPU platform, which supports WiFi, BLE, ZigBee, Thread, NB-IoT, 2G, NFC, Ethernet, etc. Rich interfaces to meet the needs of gateways in more application scenarios.
The technical challenges of the current smart gateway design scheme are: a. Challenge 1: Many protocols
How to quickly complete driver migration and improve system stability is one of the challenges.
The protocol includes two parts: wired and wireless. Among them, wireless technologies include short-range communication technology and low-power wide-area Internet of Things, such as WiFi, BLE, ZigBee, Sub-1G, NB-IoT, LoRa, SigFox, 2G, etc. Realization of multi-protocol conversion requires professional knowledge of different wireless protocols, and at the same time an operating system is required to handle the operation of multi-tasks;
b. Challenge 2: RF circuit design to solve wireless signal interference
Due to the amount of wireless, the RF circuit design of the antenna part is also a big challenge.
At the same time, the commonly used WiFi, BLE, and ZigBee are all in the 2.4GHz frequency band, and co-channel interference is common; how to solve the interference between WiFi and ZigBee is also a big challenge, and other wireless such as BLE, NB-IoT, etc. will be added in the future. Will multiply.
The General Assembly Shiping Group has specialized radio frequency engineers to do the antenna design of the scheme, which can effectively solve the same frequency interference of wireless signals,
The problem of mutual interference. c. Challenge 3: There are many platforms and compatibility needs to be resolved
There are also many private agreements that cause problems in the interconnection and interoperability of products of various brands and are incompatible.
For example, to solve the interconnection and intercommunication of products based on various ZigBee chips, ZHA and ZigBee3.0 protocol support.
d. Challenge 4: Functions continue to be added
In order to increase scene pattern recognition and facilitate human-computer interaction, such as adding voice recognition; in order to increase the security of data communication, it is necessary to increase the security encryption module.
Judging from the challenges encountered by the General Assembly Shiping Group in the design of the gateway scheme, for example:
â‘ Hardware (including radio frequency) design:
Since the system has different voltage domains, power supply, logic control, etc., it is necessary to pay attention to the specifications of each module and other details in the hardware design, and to allocate the resources of the main control reasonably. There will be more issues to be considered during the layout planning in the early stage of the design and the layout in the later stage. Due to the amount of wireless, radio frequency interference is also a big challenge. The General Assembly Shiping Group has dedicated radio frequency engineers to optimize antenna design and combine software control to reduce mutual interference, which can effectively solve the same frequency interference and mutual interference of wireless signals. The problem. Of course, the modular design of wireless also helps reduce the complexity of hardware design and facilitates mass production.
â‘¡In terms of software design:
Due to the many wireless protocols, it is a big challenge for software engineers to drive migration and data analysis of each wireless module.
In addition, the stability of WiFi and cloud links, cloud platform selection, and data based on protocols such as EDP and HTTP
Transmission, multitasking (APP human-computer interaction, remote control) will face some challenges, which need to be overcome one by one.
These are no small challenges. The General Assembly Shiping Group has accumulated a certain amount of experience in these aspects, which can help customers avoid detours.
Multi-gateway complete solution + ecological chain to achieve a win-win situationSmart homes have different requirements in different scenarios. The basic function of the gateway is to do protocol conversion. Large and complete solutions are suitable for promotion, but actual applications need to be customized. The General Assembly Shiping Group has a variety of gateway solutions with high flexibility, which can meet the differentiated needs of different customers and different application scenarios. For example, it has launched two different gateway solutions equipped with NXP ZigBee JN5169, namely NXP i.MX6UL MPU platform solution and NXP LPC54018 MCU platform solution. The former belongs to edge computing nodes and is suitable for home/building automation/smart city scenarios, while the latter belongs to Light gateway-type smart remote control, suitable for home scenarios, with voice recognition and Amazon AWS access. In addition, the General Assembly Shiping Group also has the following three advantages.
ZigBee JN5169 has high maturity and good compatibility. JN5169 is the most cost-effective ZigBee product on the market, and has a large number of users, such as Xiaomi, Sundi, Shenzhen Ou Ruibo, Henan Ziguang and other well-known manufacturers. JN5169 supports the ZigBee3.0 protocol, which can solve the interconnection and intercommunication problems between different customer products. The General Assembly Shiping Group has many years of technical accumulation in ZigBee, BLE, NFC, WiFi and other technologies, and has many successful cases of software protocol stack, radio frequency, certification, etc., which can help customers quickly pass certification and quickly import volume Produce.
High system integrity, providing a complete set of solutions except gateways. The General Assembly Shiping Group has a complete ZigBee smart hardware product suite, such as door sensors, temperature and humidity sensors, smoke alarms, dimming lights, and smart sockets, allowing the gateway to connect to many smart devices through ZigBee. The gateway transmits information to the cloud through WiFi, and users can view the information remotely through the mobile phone APP, and can also set up the home scene.
Multi-ecological chain cooperation saves manufacturers' communication costs and realizes the interconnection of more products. The General Assembly Shiping Group has abundant resources in the upstream and downstream of the industry. In-depth cooperation with upstream chip manufacturers, downstream customers, cloud platform manufacturers, solution design companies, etc., so there will be sufficient communication and interaction in solution development and design. Accelerate the development and launch of customer products by providing a complete turnkey solution.
In the process of project design, maintain close communication and technical docking with leaders of ecological chains such as Xiaomi, Alibaba, Tencent, and Amazon. It can shorten the customer's research and development cycle, reduce communication costs and technical input, and accelerate product launches. At the same time, it also means that you can quickly join the ecological chain alliance to achieve a win-win situation.
In addition, the smart gateway solution to the market mainly considers the stability of the platform, the ease of operation and the price. Based on different gateway solutions, the Unigroup Shiping Group is equipped with experienced MPU hardware engineers, MPU software engineers, MCU engineers, RF engineers, and APP & Cloud engineers to form a strong R&D team, and carry out program design and optimization.
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