A black box gift for x-mas

Your Device...

,

...can levitate

..is worth an exebition of its own

It's just a magnificent thing

An Internet Thing

A beautiful Thing

It needs to talk to the world

It needs to understand the world

But the world is full of Internet Things that talk strange dialects

Some of the Internet Things even use a cable

So you design YOUR beautiful Internet Thingi using your even

more beautiful dialect

Why not!?

Everyone else does.

But the world is full of Internet Things that talk other strange

dialects

So when you want to talk to other Internet Thingis

And when other Internet Thingis want to talk to your beautiful

Internet Thingi

It's a mess. No Inter to be seen anywhere. Just Things.

We think Internet Thingis should be able to talk to each others

So in August of year 2000 we sat down and made a solution.

Yes, the 28th of August 2000

Not so many things around

We like dialects

So we made it possible for everything to talk it's own dialect

We like different ways to communicate

So we made it possible for cable, wireless or the yet unknown medium thingis to work together

and still be able to talk to each other.

We like small

So we designed it to work on tiny things

We like freedom

So we made it to be open and free

,

A black box...

,

It has properties and we need a common way to read and change

them

,

It needs a way to tell the world what it can do and how it is done.

,

It needs a common way to tell things to the world

,

And it needs a common way to update its content

,

So we remembered the success of this tiny black little thing

And we copied it

,

Made a model or let us call it an abstraction

,

Where...

,

,

Each black box have registers

This is how the black box is configured.

Writing its registers.

This is how the properties of the

black box are shared to the

world.

Reading its registers.

Two simple operations

needed

READ & WRITE

Some registers must be available

Some registers are user defined

,

The GUID is stored in a set of must be there registers

Globally Unique ID

Every single device is identified with one.

Can be used as a serial (tracking)

number and more...

,

The MDF is also stored in a set of must be there registers

Module Description File

Tells what the black box is, what it can do and how it can be set up to do the

things it can do.

Built to be read by machines

Contains manufacturer information. Phone numbers, email addresses, web urls etc

If you have the thing you have the

information

Answers "Where can I download drivers?"

If you have the thing you have the

information

Answers "Where is the manual?"

If you have the thing you have the

information

Tells what registers are available and gives help on how to set them up.

If you have the thing you have the

information

Abstracts registers on a higher level as well know strings, floating point numbers and all other types you

would expect to find.

Easy

Provide wizards for configuration.

One way to configure them all

Can define a Decision Matrix

The DM can be used to program devices to do certain things when

others things happen.

EVENTDECISIONACTION

Read & Write is all you need

Events

We wanted black boxes to be able to tell the world things to.

Hi there...

First of all a method to tell the world that the things are there

Hi I'm your new washing machine

I can...

Designed to be usable also by low end thingis on the receiving end.

OK I am a lamp.

ON means I should turn my

self on.

No longer just "123.56" or "0xFF99" or "1000110" received from a strange

thingi

What the hell does that number

mean?

Is there a unit?

So ON means ONOFF mean OFF

And you decide what to do when

you receive it.

And when a temperature is sent you know it is a temperature and what unit

it is in.

Thats better.

Actually this is true for all SI defined units. They are all defined.

SI units – remember them

from school?

And there is more of course

,

A lot more

,

We named it VSCPVery Simple Control Protocol

,

Very Simple for end users that is

,

But actually it is more like a framework today

,

We use a fat bee as or mascot

Because many fat bees can do incredible things in the world.

Probably more than one or two big elephants can do if one think about

it

We did not even mention Friends in what we today call VSCP & Friends - but sorry we have no more slides

We even forgot to tell you about the common way to update firmware

and... and... and...

Thanks for listening

If you want to know more visit http://www.vscp.org

Åke Hedman, Grodans Paradis AB