Discovering Controlled Devices through Smartphones

For local control based on Wi-Fi wireless transmission media, data runs on the TCP/IP protocol stack. The following two issues should be solved since the smartphone is not directly connected to the controlled device. How does the smartphone find the controlled device, and how does the smartphone communicate with the controlled device?

How does the smartphone find the controlled device, that is, how does the smartphone know the IP address of the controlled device? Since all data is transmitted based on the IP layer, obtaining the IP address of the controlled device is a prerequisite for subsequent data communication. You may consider: "I can log in to the Wi-Fi router interface and check the IP address of the controlled device directly on the Wi-Fi router interface, right?" Yes, you can certainly obtain the IP address of the controlled device in this way. However, manually querying IP addresses completely goes against the original intention of IoT technology to bring convenience. Thus, a technology is required to automatically discover the controlled device. This part will be discussed in detail in section 8.2.

For the local control frameworks based on Bluetooth control, you can learn from the Bluetooth scanning introduced in Chapter 7 that the Bluetooth of the controlled device will broadcast its own Bluetooth information, and the smartphone only needs to scan the Bluetooth of the controlled device. Discovering the controlled device through Bluetooth is much simpler than Wi-Fi. After the smartphone connects to the Bluetooth of the controlled device, it can send data to the device. In addition, Bluetooth transmission does not depend on the TPC/IP protocol stack, as it has its own transmission protocol. This part will be introduced in detail in section 8.3.