Smart Home Group Synchronization Across Control Apps
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users of smart home devices controlled by different systems face a fragmented experience due to the need to manage device groups separately across multiple device control applications, leading to inconsistent and inefficient group management.
Innovation Solution
A system synchronizes device group data across different device control systems by identifying and merging corresponding groups based on name and device similarity, using algorithms like Levenshtein Distance and Jaccard Similarity, and propagates user modifications to all connected applications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If device groups are managed separately across multiple device control applications, then each application can independently control its own device groups, but users face a fragmented experience and must manage device groups separately leading to inconsistency
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges device groups from multiple device control applications into a unified device group structure. The system identifies corresponding device groups across different applications (e.g., Application 1, Application 2, Application 3) and combines them into a single synchronized device group, allowing users to manage all devices from one interface rather than separately managing groups in each application.
Solution Approach 2:
The unified device group structure serves multiple device control applications simultaneously. A single device group can be accessed and controlled from any of the connected applications, providing universal control capability across the entire ecosystem of applications without requiring separate group management in each.
2Reliability
If device groups are managed independently in each application, then each application maintains its own group data, but this leads to time-consuming manual synchronization and user effort
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements automatic feedback mechanisms that monitor changes in device groups across multiple applications. When a device group modification occurs in any application (such as adding or removing devices), the system automatically detects this change and propagates it to all other applications, ensuring continuous synchronization without user intervention.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary identification and matching of corresponding device groups across applications before synchronization is needed. By pre-establishing the relationships between device groups in different applications based on naming conventions and device compositions, the system prepares the data structure in advance, enabling rapid automatic synchronization when changes occur.
3Ease of operation
If users manually manage device groups in each application, then detailed control is possible, but this increases user effort and reduces efficiency
Solution Approach 1:
The system provides self-service automatic synchronization that eliminates the need for users to manually manage device groups across multiple applications. The system autonomously monitors, detects, and propagates device group changes across all connected applications, maintaining precise and consistent group data without requiring user intervention or manual coordination.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for synchronizing device group data across different device control applications are described. A device group may include two or more smart home devices that may be controlled/supported by different device control applications. A user may set up device groups, including the same devices, in the different device control applications. A system may include a group synchronization service that synchronizes (e.g., merges) the multiple device groups across the different device control applications. The groups may be synchronized based on matching group names, matching devices included in the group, etc. After the device groups are synchronized, modifications made by the user to a device group in one device control application may be propagated to other device control applications.