CN101079730A - Remote control system and control method of information appliance - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a remote control system and control method for information home appliances. The system includes a session control server for forwarding SIP messages, a home gateway server and a control terminal; the control terminal is connected to the session control server through an IP access network, and the home gateway The server is connected to the session control server through the IP access network. The method includes: 1. The control terminal sends the SIP message containing the control information to the session control server. 2. The session control server sends the SIP message to the home gateway server according to the network address of the home gateway server included in the SIP message; 3. The home gateway server performs control on the information home appliance according to the ID number of the information home appliance and the control instruction in the SIP message operate. The remote control system and method of the present invention improve the effectiveness of control communication, facilitate remote control of information appliances by users, and facilitate centralized control of information appliances.

Description

Remote control system and control method for information appliances

technical field

The invention relates to a control system and a control method, in particular to a system and a control method for realizing remote control of the operation and operation of information home appliances through a remote communication network.

Background technique

With the development of network technology and information home appliance industry, the original simple home appliances can be connected to the network, thus producing information home appliances, also called network home appliances. Information home appliances can receive data from the network and feed back their status information to the network. The birth of information home appliances allows users to know the data of information home appliances in the home and control them through the Internet, so that users can use the information without returning home. You can control the information appliances in your home.

Existing remote control methods for information appliances mainly use point-to-point short message communication to remotely control information appliances or use web pages for remote control.

For the point-to-point short message control mode, the management of each information home appliance is relatively isolated, and the short message control requires the server on the network side to convert the short message format, and the effectiveness of communication control is not high.

For the webpage-based control method, only when the user browses to the corresponding webpage can the information appliances be controlled, and mobile terminals are generally not convenient for browsing webpages. The controls are inconvenient.

Contents of the invention

The object of the present invention is to provide a remote control system and method for information appliances in view of the above-mentioned deficiencies in the prior art, which introduces the mechanism of human-to-human communication into the control of information appliances, and uses SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) messages to Controlling information home appliances and unified management of information home appliances facilitates the user's control of information home appliances and improves the effectiveness of control communication. Especially for users who use mobile terminals, remote control of information home appliances is more convenient.

In order to achieve the purpose of the above invention, the present invention provides a remote control system for information appliances, the system includes: a session control server, a home gateway server, and a control terminal; the control terminal is connected to the session control server through an IP access network , for sending a SIP message containing control information to the session control server; the home gateway server is connected to the session control server through an IP access network, and is used for receiving the SIP message containing control information sent by the session control service, And analyze the SIP message, and control the information appliance connected to it according to the control instruction; the session control server is used to receive the SIP message containing the control information sent by the control terminal, and forward it to the home gateway server. The session control server may be a call session control server (CSCF, Call Session Control Function) in the IMS network.

The present invention also provides a remote control method for information appliances, including the following steps:

Step 1. The control terminal sends a SIP message containing control information to the session control server. The control information includes at least the user number corresponding to the control terminal, the network address of the home gateway server, the ID number of the information appliance, and Control instruction.

Step 2. The session control server sends the SIP message to the home gateway server according to the network address of the home gateway server included in the SIP message;

Step 3. The home gateway server performs a control operation on the connected information appliances according to the ID number of the information appliances in the SIP message and the control instruction;

Step 4, end.

The remote control system and control method of information home appliances of the present invention introduce the mode of human-to-human communication into the remote control of information home appliances through the communication method based on SIP messages, which improves the effectiveness of communication and facilitates users to control information home appliances. remote control, and can conveniently carry out centralized control on information appliances.

The technical solutions of the present invention will be described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments.

Description of drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic structural view of a specific embodiment 1 of a remote control system for information appliances of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic structural diagram of a specific embodiment 2 of the remote control system for information appliances of the present invention;

Fig. 3 is a schematic structural diagram of a specific embodiment 3 of a remote control system for information appliances of the present invention;

Fig. 4 is a schematic structural diagram of a specific embodiment 4 of the remote control system for information appliances of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a schematic structural view of Embodiment 5 of the remote control system for information appliances of the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a schematic structural diagram of Embodiment 6 of the remote control system for information appliances of the present invention;

Fig. 7 is a flow chart of a specific embodiment of the remote control method of an information home appliance according to the present invention.

Detailed ways

The invention introduces the human-to-human communication mode into the management and control of information home appliances, and uses the communication mode based on SIP messages to realize the user's control of the home appliances. The user sends the SIP message containing control information to the session control server through the control terminal, and the session control server forwards the SIP message to the corresponding home gateway, and the home information appliances in the home gateway perform corresponding control operations. The present invention introduces the mode of communication between people into the management of information appliances. When an information appliance leaves the factory, the equipment manufacturer should assign a code to each appliance. The ex-factory code conforms to the standard format, and should be able to uniquely specify the information appliance in the world, which is called the ID (identification number) of the information appliance. This ID number is equivalent to the mobile phone number in Renren Communication.

Referring to Fig. 1, it is a schematic structural diagram of a specific embodiment 1 of a remote control system for information appliances of the present invention, the system includes a session control server 1, a home gateway server 2, and a control terminal 3;

The control terminal 3 is connected to the session control server 1 through an IP access network, and is used to send a SIP message containing control information to the call session control server; the control terminal can be any communication terminal supporting the SIP message , the preferred communication terminal is a mobile terminal supporting SIP messages;

The home gateway server 2 is connected to the session control server 1 through the IP access network, and is used to receive the SIP message containing the control information sent by the session control server, and analyze the SIP message, and to connect to it according to the control instruction. information appliances to control;

The session control server 1 is used for receiving the SIP message containing control information sent by the control terminal 3 and forwarding it to the home gateway server 2 . The session control server plays the role of relaying the SIP message, and establishes a communication connection based on the SIP message between the home gateway and the control terminal through the session control server.

Referring to FIG. 2 , it is a schematic structural diagram of Embodiment 2 of the remote control system for information appliances of the present invention. The difference from Embodiment 1 is that the session control server 1 is specifically a call session control server (CSCF) in an IMS network. , Call Session Control Function) 11. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS for short) is a subsystem proposed by the 3rd Generation General Partnership Project (3GPP) in the R5 version to support IP multimedia services. The core feature of IMS is that it adopts the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and has nothing to do with access. Therefore, IMS is an important step towards an all-IP network service system. Under the development trend of network convergence, 3GPP, ETSI and ITU-T are all researching IMS-based network convergence solutions, with the aim of making IMS a general platform based on SIP sessions, thereby providing a general service platform for future multimedia applications. At the same time, it supports multiple access methods of fixed and mobile, realizing the integration of fixed network and mobile network. Compared with softswitching technology, IMS has access independence, and this feature also constitutes the core technical advantage of IMS. Both the communication endpoint (IMS terminal) and the network of the IMS network are based on IP. In the 3GPP specification, this is guaranteed by IP Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN). In this embodiment, the advantages of the session control of the IMS system are fully utilized, and the control information is transmitted by using SIP messages to realize the control of information appliances. Since IMS has good access independence, the home gateway server and the control terminal can use different types of IP access network, for example, the home gateway server can be a computer connected to the Internet, connected to the IMS network through the Internet, thereby receiving the SIP message forwarded by the call session control server, and the control terminal is an instant communication terminal supporting IMS, Access the IMS network through the GPRS network, and send SIP messages to the call session control server. The home gateway server and the control terminal may access the same call session control server, or may access different call session control servers, which is mainly determined by the regions where the home gateway server and the control terminal are located. If the home gateway server and the control terminal are connected to different call session control servers, it is also necessary to forward SIP messages between the two call session control servers.

Referring to Fig. 3, it is a schematic structural diagram of Embodiment 3 of the remote control system for information appliances of the present invention. In this embodiment, the home gateway server and the control terminal are connected to different call session control servers. The SIP message is forwarded between the call session control servers, that is, the call session control server corresponding to the control terminal forwards the received SIP message to the call session control server corresponding to the home gateway server, and the call session control server corresponding to the home gateway server transmits the SIP message The message is sent to the home gateway server.

The present invention will be further described below by taking a remote control for reducing the temperature of an air conditioner in a home through a mobile terminal as an example. In this example, the mobile terminal and the home gateway correspond to different session control servers, and the mobile terminal sends a SIP message for instant messaging to the network side. The message at least includes the user's own user number, the network address of the corresponding home gateway, the device ID number of the air conditioner, and a control instruction for lowering the temperature of the air conditioner (the instruction may include a specific value for lowering the temperature). The SIP message is sent to the session control server (CSCF in the IMS network, Call Session Control Function) responsible for accessing the mobile terminal through the GPRS network, and the session control server sends the SIP message sent by the mobile terminal according to the network address of the corresponding home gateway. The message is forwarded to the session control server responsible for accessing the home gateway, and the session control server responsible for accessing the home gateway sends the SIP message to the home gateway managing the air conditioner through the Internet according to the address of the home gateway in the SIP message, and the home gateway receives After the SIP message, the air conditioner is adjusted to lower the temperature according to the control instruction in the SIP message and the ID of the air conditioner.

The prerequisite for realizing remote control of information appliances is that the ID of the controlled information appliance, the network address of the home gateway, and the control instruction set of the controlled information appliance must be stored in the control terminal; and the home gateway must have the ability to parse SIP messages. Capability, and the ID of the controlled information appliance and the corresponding control instruction set are pre-stored.

Referring to FIG. 4 , it is a schematic structural diagram of a specific embodiment 4 of a remote control system for information appliances of the present invention. The difference from Embodiment 2 is that the system also includes an instant messaging application server 4 set in the IMS network, which communicates with the caller The session control server 11 is connected to receive the SIP message sent by the call session control server 11, perform a logical judgment on the control authority of the control information in the SIP message, and return the judgment result to the call session control server 11. After introducing the instant messaging application server, the call session control server does not directly send the received SIP message to the home gateway, but first forwards the SIP message to the instant messaging application server connected to it. The information appliance corresponding to the home gateway has user information with control authority (the user information is stored in the server when the user registers the control service of the information appliance), when the instant messaging application server receives the SIP message, according to The user number judges whether the user has the control authority to the information appliance corresponding to the home gateway, and sends a return message including the judgment result to the call session control server, and if the user has the control authority, the call session After receiving the return message, the control server forwards the SIP message to the home gateway server; otherwise, the control server does not forward the SIP message to the home gateway server, thereby stopping the control of the information appliance. The return message for the instant messaging application server to the call session control server can be in the following form: if the user who sends the information has control authority, it can be a 200 OK message for the SIP message returned to the session control server, otherwise it can be a 400 NOK message.

Referring to FIG. 5 , it is a schematic structural diagram of Embodiment 5 of the remote control system for information appliances of the present invention. The difference from Embodiment 2 is that it also includes an information appliance attribution database server 6 and information appliance data set in the IMS network. The management server 5 is connected to the control terminal 3 and the home gateway server 2 through the IMS network and the IP access network; the information appliance attribution database server 6 is used to store the static data of the information appliance, at least including the identification number of the information appliance and a set of control instructions; the information appliance data management server 5 is used to store the use data of the information appliance in the state of use, the use data at least including the static data and use status data of the information appliance and the home gateway corresponding to the information appliance The address information of the server. In order to better manage the data of information appliances, the present invention introduces an information appliance attribution database server and an information appliance data management server, so as to better realize the acquisition of related information of information appliances and the management of information appliances.

The invention introduces the data storage mode of human-to-human communication into the management of information home appliances. When an information home appliance leaves the factory, the equipment manufacturer should assign a code to each device. The ex-factory code conforms to the standard format, and should be able to uniquely specify the information appliance in the world. It is called the ID (identification number) of the information appliance. Through the ID, it can be located to the attribution database server of the information appliance to which the information appliance belongs. The ID of the information appliance is stored in the information appliance and the information appliance attribution database server. At the same time, the manufacturer of the information appliance will provide other static information about the appliance, which may include: the brand of the appliance, the name of the appliance, the model of the appliance, the production serial number, the configuration information of the appliance when it leaves the factory, and the set of control commands that can be supported. These static data are stored in the database server of the information appliance when the equipment leaves the factory. For the existing data storage method of the information appliance, these static data must be stored in the information appliance, and the information appliance belongs to the database server. In the present invention, these static data do not need to be stored in the information appliance, thereby reducing the data storage capacity of the information appliance itself. The information home appliance attribution database server can be divided in many ways, for example: it can be divided by the manufacturer, or by the type of home appliance, and the ID number of the corresponding information home appliance is also coded in the same way, so that by analyzing the ID number Then it can be located to which information appliance the information appliance belongs to and which database server it belongs to.

The information appliance data management server manages one or more home gateway servers, and the home gateway server manages all information home appliances in the family. The information appliance data management server stores the usage data of all the information appliances in use among the multiple home gateways it manages, and in the information appliance data management server, the information appliance data is organized according to each home gateway server. In the present invention, any information appliance is connected to the home gateway server, and a family is provided with a home gateway server, and all information appliances in the family are connected to the home gateway server, and the home gateway server is connected to the home information appliance in the family. Unified management and real-time monitoring of the status of information appliances. The server of the home gateway stores all the data of all information appliances in use within the home, and is consistent with the data in the information appliance data management server. The information appliance is managed by the home gateway server inside the home. On the other hand, when the home gateway server is disconnected from the network, the data of the information appliance can be saved. After the network connection is normal, the information appliance data management server can be updated. data.

The information appliance data management server and the home gateway server only store the data of the information appliance in use. When a new information appliance is connected to the home gateway server, the information appliance will store its ID number and report it to the information through the home gateway server. The home appliance data management server obtains the static data of the information home appliance from the attribution database server of the information home appliance according to the ID number of the information home appliance. And store the static data in the information appliance data management server and the home gateway server.

Since the information appliance data management server stores the data of all information appliances currently in use, other servers or terminals in the network can obtain the data of all information appliances currently in use from the information appliance data management server, and the acquisition method There can be many kinds, and the traditional web page interaction method can be adopted, and the instant message communication method can also be adopted. Compared with the existing technology, this data storage method has great advantages. In practical applications, corresponding information appliances Relevant data can be obtained by means of instant message communication, so that the information appliance data management server is also responsible for managing subscription information of instant messaging users to information appliance events. The information home appliance event refers to a change in the state of the information home appliance, for example, online, offline, status data update, etc. of the information home appliance. When an event occurs, the data management server will notify the event to all subscribers of the event. The instant messaging user's terminal sends corresponding data to the instant messaging user's terminal. This method is very suitable for widely used mobile terminals. The event subscription is not for a certain information appliance, but for the home gateway server. A home gateway server corresponds to a family. The event subscription is based on all the information home appliances in the home. The collection of is an object, that is to say, for an online event, it refers to an online event of any home appliance in the family. If a mobile terminal subscribes to an event, when the event occurs, through the information interaction between the servers, the event information will be notified to the information appliance data management server, and the information appliance data management server will In this way, the user does not need to actively obtain the information of the user, and the online status management and instant communication of the home appliance are difficult to achieve based on the data storage methods of the existing information home appliances. In addition, In addition to ordinary users, the subscribers in the present invention can also be servers in the network. For example, the information appliance ownership data server can be a subscriber. When an event occurs in the information appliance, the event can be sent to the information appliance ownership data server. Data server, because the data server belonging to the information home appliance is closely connected with the information home appliance manufacturer, this instant message communication method can enable the manufacturer to know the status of the information home appliance it produces in real time.

After the introduction of the information home appliance attribution database server and the information home appliance data management server, the management and control of the information home appliance is more flexible, and the control terminal can obtain the instruction set of the information home appliance from the information home appliance attribution database server and the information home appliance data management server in the network and other static information, and can make full use of the advantages of the IMS system in instant communication to send the static information and dynamic information of information appliances to the control terminal in an active push manner, so that the user of the control terminal can instantly understand the status of the current information appliance Information, from better management and control of information appliances. The instant messaging method adopted by the present invention is used to control and manage information home appliances, and the setting method of instant messaging software for everyone's communication can be used in the setting of the control interface of the control terminal, so that the user is more convenient and humanized to use, and it is also convenient for users to use Taking the control of an air conditioner as an example, the air conditioner is displayed as an instant messaging object on the user's mobile terminal, and its icon (portrait) may be an air conditioner. After the user selects the icon of the air conditioner, the screen display of the mobile terminal will automatically list the current working status and operation list of the air conditioner. In the operation list, there are temperature adjustment items. After the user sets the temperature adjustment item, the mobile terminal converts the user input into control information and sends it in the form of a SIP message, thereby realizing the control of the information appliance.

Referring to Fig. 6, it is a schematic structural diagram of a specific embodiment 6 of the remote control system for information appliances of the present invention. The call session control server 11 is connected to receive the SIP message sent by the call session control server 11, perform a logical judgment on the control authority of the control information in the SIP message, and return the judgment result to the call session control server 11 .

The present invention also provides a control method based on the remote control system of the information appliance of the present invention, see FIG. 7 , which is a flow chart of a specific embodiment of the remote control method of the information appliance of the present invention, including the following steps:

Step 101. The control terminal sends a SIP message containing control information to the session control server. The control information includes at least the user number corresponding to the control terminal, the network address of the home gateway server, the ID number of the information appliance, and Control instruction. The session control server may specifically be a call session control server (CSCF) in the IMS network.

Step 102, the session control server sends the SIP message to the home gateway server according to the network address of the home gateway server included in the SIP message;

Step 103, the home gateway server performs a control operation on the connected information appliance according to the ID number of the information appliance in the SIP message and the control instruction;

Step 104, end.

In order to better control information appliances, an instant messaging application server is introduced to perform authentication operations on the control information in the SIP message. Therefore, between the steps 1 and 2, it may also include: the call session control After the server receives the SIP message, it forwards the SIP message to the instant messaging application server, and the instant messaging application server analyzes the control information in the SIP message to determine whether the user has the corresponding control authority of the information appliance, and send a return message containing the judgment result to the call session control server; if the judgment result is that the user has the control authority, then perform step 2; otherwise, perform step 4.

The authentication operation of the control information in the SIP message can also be completed by the home gateway server, which requires the home gateway service to pre-store user information that has control authority for the information appliances corresponding to the home gateway. In this way, in step The above-mentioned authentication operation does not need to be inserted between 1 and 2, but the following steps are inserted between the steps 2 and 3: after the home gateway server receives the SIP message, it analyzes the control information in the SIP message , judging whether the user has the control authority to the information appliance corresponding to the home gateway server, if yes, perform step 3, otherwise perform step 4.

In addition, in practical applications, for the control terminal, the interface management style of instant messaging tools such as QQ and MSN can be used to design the control interface of information appliances. For example, each information appliance can be set as a graphic icon , and can also be given a humanized nickname, etc. And the unified operation of multiple information appliances can be designed as an option or an icon. For example, an icon named "sleep" can be designed. When the user clicks on this icon, the control terminal will uniformly shut down all the information appliances in the home. The control operation saves the user the trouble of controlling the information appliances one by one, which is more convenient for the user.

In addition, those skilled in the art should understand that the control information of the information appliances can also be encapsulated into other network transmission protocol formats for transmission, and the remote control of the information appliances can also be realized. For example, the HTTP protocol can be used to encapsulate the control information and send it to the home gateway server through the IP network. However, due to the advantages of the SIP protocol in session control, especially the session control based on the IMS system, the present invention selects SIP messages as the carrier of information appliance control information. The SIP protocol has the following advantages: The SIP protocol is a text-based protocol. Because this method is easy to understand and simple to implement, it is very popular among device developers. The SIP protocol considers and supports the user's mobility. The SIP protocol defines different functions such as registration server and redirection server. When the user's location changes, its location information will be registered to the registration server at any time. For mobile terminal users, it is convenient and quick to control information home appliances. The SIP protocol adopts the client-server message processing method of the HTTP protocol. The SIP message itself has a certain positioning capability. The identification method of the domain name caller@caller.com in the SIP message header can include user number information, location information, user name and its attribution information, etc., which is a major advantage of the SIP message expression method. The SIP protocol can be integrated with many other IETF protocols to provide various services (such as SDP, RSVP, RTSP, MIME, HTTP, etc.), so that the SIP protocol has great flexibility in the realization of services. The scalability of the SIP protocol is strong. Since the release, several new messages have been defined according to business needs and some feature requirements. When the message is extended, its compatibility is better. The SIP protocol has an inseparable relationship with the Internet, the largest IP network at present, which makes the SIP protocol closer to the general trend of IP-based networks in the next generation. Therefore, adopting SIP message as the carrier of control information in the control field of information appliances conforms to the development trend of the next generation network, and has huge development space.

Finally, it should be noted that the above embodiments are only used to illustrate the technical solutions of the present invention without limitation. Although the present invention has been described in detail with reference to the preferred embodiments, those of ordinary skill in the art should understand that the technical solutions of the present invention can be The scheme shall be modified or equivalently replaced without departing from the spirit and scope of the technical scheme of the present invention.

Claims (7)

1. A remote control system for information appliances, characterized in that it includes a session control server, a home gateway server, and a control terminal; The control terminal is connected to the session control server through an IP access network, and is used to send a SIP message containing control information to the session control server; The home gateway server is connected to the session control server through the IP access network, and is used to receive the SIP message containing the control information sent by the session control server, analyze the SIP message, and control the information appliances connected to it according to the control instruction. to control; The session control server is configured to receive the SIP message containing the control information sent by the control terminal, and forward it to the home gateway server. 2. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that the session control server is a call session control server in an IMS network. 3. The system of claim 2, further comprising: The instant messaging application server set in the IMS network is connected to the call session control server, and is used to receive the SIP message sent by the call session control server, and perform a logical judgment on the control authority of the control information in the SIP message, And return the judgment result to the call session control server. 4. The system according to claim 2 or 3, further comprising: The home gateway server and the information appliance data management server set in the IMS network are connected to the control terminal and the home gateway server through the IMS network and the IP access network; the information appliance attribution database server is used to store the static data of the information appliance The data includes at least the identification number and the control instruction set of the information appliance; the information appliance data management server is used to store the usage data of the information appliance in use, and the usage data includes at least the static data and usage status of the information appliance The data and the address information of the home gateway server corresponding to the information appliance. 5. A remote control method for information appliances, characterized in that it comprises the following steps: Step 1. The control terminal sends a SIP message containing control information to the session control server. The control information includes at least the user number corresponding to the control terminal, the network address of the home gateway server, the ID number of the information appliance, and Control instruction. Step 2. The session control server sends the SIP message to the home gateway server according to the network address of the home gateway server included in the SIP message; Step 3. The home gateway server performs a control operation on the connected information appliances according to the ID number of the information appliances in the SIP message and the control instruction; Step 4, end. 6. The method according to claim 5, further comprising: after the session control server receives the SIP message, forwarding the SIP message to the instant messaging application server between the steps 1 and 2 , the instant messaging application server analyzes the control information in the SIP message, judges whether the user has the control authority to the information appliance corresponding to the home gateway server, and sends a message containing the judgment result to the session control server return message; if the judgment result is that the user has the control authority, execute step 2; otherwise, execute step 4. 7. The method according to claim 5, further comprising: after receiving the SIP message, the home gateway server analyzes the control information in the SIP message between the steps 2 and 3, It is judged whether the user has the control authority to the information appliance corresponding to the home gateway server, if yes, perform step 3, otherwise, perform step 4.

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