When designing a smart home system, the most important aspect is the networking method. The networking method should be considered from various perspectives, such as installation and maintenance related to the overall stability, scalability, and real-time performance of the smart home system. For networking methods, wired networking is basically obsolete now.
The inherent advantages of wireless networking make it highly marketable. There are now various types of networking methods, such as Zigbee self-organizing networks, WiFi mesh networks, Z-wave, etc. Of course, a complete smart home system cannot be built solely through wireless communication; in most cases, multiple technologies are mixed.
This article only introduces one type of wireless communication in smart homes—WiFi wireless. Wi-Fi wireless technology has covered every aspect of our lives, and everyone is familiar with it. WIFI networking uses a star network topology, and one of its important functions is to transmit large amounts of data such as video streams. Therefore, let's build a simple network to take a look!
WiFi Networking
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First, computers, tablets, and mobile phones have WIFI modules, so they communicate with smart routers via WIFI.
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For TVs, if the TV plays Internet TV or Internet videos, WIFI wireless communication is required. In particular, most TVs sold now have WIFI functions or USB interfaces, which can connect USB storage devices and storage devices with USB interfaces, and can also be equipped with a WIFI module.
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Smart access control video intercom requires online video. In other words, if you press the doorbell, the real-time video monitored by the outdoor surveillance camera will be transmitted to the door video intercom terminal in your home. The transmission of this video stream must use WIFI or a wired network.
After clarifying which home devices should use WIFI, the next step is to consider how to connect these devices to the smart router.
For devices with a display interface (such as mobile phones and computers), they can be connected to the smart router through wireless settings, but what about devices without a display interface for operation? In fact, there is a solution. The Wi-Fi Alliance has introduced a new technology called Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). This technology requires router support. If you need to connect a device that cannot operate the display interface to the network, you only need to press the WPS button on the router and then press the connection button on the device. Of course, pressing the connection button on the device needs to be implemented by developers. And of course, this is not the only implementation method.
However, WPS technology has security risks and is easy to be decrypted. Later, Texas Instruments (TI) introduced a more advanced WIFI connection technology based on WPS called SimpleLinks. This technology needs to be implemented through software on mobile phones to connect WIFI devices to routers. This technology solves the security problem of WPS to a certain extent.
That's all for today's sharing. EBYTE is committed to better enabling the development of IoT, intelligence, and automation every day, and improving resource utilization. For more information about WiFi module products, interested friends can log on to our official website.