Typical Internet of Things (IoT) and smart home environments are composed of smart devices that are controlled and orchestrated by applications developed and run in the cloud. Correctness is important for these applications, since they control the home's physical security (i.e. door locks) and systems (i.e. HVAC). Unfortunately, many smart home applications and systems exhibit poor security characteristics and insufficient system support. Instead they force application developers to reason about a combination of complicated scenarios-asynchronous events and distributed devices. This paper demonstrates that existing cloud-based smart home platforms provide insufficient support for applications to correctly deal with concurrency and data consistency issues. These weaknesses expose platform vulnerabilities that affect system correctness and security (e.g. a smart lock erroneously unlocked). To address this, we present OKAPI, an application-level API that provides strict atomicity and event ordering. We evaluate our work using the Samsung SmartThings smart home devices, hub, and cloud infrastructure. In addition to identifying shortfalls of cloud-based smart home platforms, we propose design guidelines to make application developers oblivious of smart home platforms' consistency and concurrency intricacies. 
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                            An Internet of Things Testbed for Education and Community Research
                        
                    
    
            The testbed presented in this study supplies various devices to emulate a smart home. The paper highlights how devices can be connected and programmed to perform functions using an application programming interface. Remote-controlled robots in the testbed enable a user to manipulate, monitor, and configure home-based Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies. The paper describes the equipment used in the testbed, including a wireless security camera, a smart lock, a climate sensor, and two types of robots. Security measures implemented in the testbed are also discussed. Several application scenarios are presented and analyzed on how they were accomplished to demonstrate the functionalities. The smart home testbed is a useful resource for education and development, as it allows for sufficient performance using a single control point. 
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                            - Award ID(s):
- 2016485
- PAR ID:
- 10553231
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Internet of Things
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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