Bridge Web and the home appliances carrying ECHONET Lite

Masao Isshiki
Director, ECHONET Device Authentication Center, 
W3C Site manager, Keio University
Morio Hirahara
Director, ECHONET Consortium
Takashi Murakami
Director, ECHONET Consortium

  ECHONET Consortium was founded in 1997, with the aim of creating a
rich 21st-century society based on the development of basic software and
hardware for home networks, attributed at remote control or monitoring
of home appliances. We have also developed and disclosed these basic
technologies as ECHONET Specifications. ECHONET Specifications are
universal communication standards for linking home appliances made by
different manufacturers and providing various services using easily
installed transmission media, in both new and existing homes. They have
also been recognized as international standards.

  Today, there are growing expectations of the creation of “smart
houses” that feature home networks based on IT. To meet these
expectations, not only are ECHONET-compliant products and services being
introduced to various markets by our member companies, but projects
related to smart cities and communities are also spreading globally. In
technical aspects, ECHONET specifications have the following
characteristics:
-Applicable for ordinary households, multi-dwelling buildings, shops,
and small- and medium-sized office buildings
-Allows use of detailed rules (ECHONET device objects) for all types of
household equipment (88 categories)?including household devices,
residential appliances, sensors, and health management devices?as
ECHONET devices.  
-Allows easy installation and changing of systems through plug-&-play
functions
-Permits free combination of transmission media (e.g., wireless media,
wired media, etc.) according to the installation environment
-Makes product cost reduction easier by employing a middleware adaptor
system
-International standardization in ISO and IEC is complete.
  
  In pursuing on technical aspect, ECHONET Consortium has expected to
have a discussion about how to bridge Web and a home appliance,
balancing security and interoperability.