• home automation
• home manager
• ZigBee

Application fields involving domotic or industrial automation, have been seeing an increasing interest from both the industry and the academia, with digital wireless protocols as preferred communication technologies. ZigBee is a standard communication technology which provides wireless connectivity and functional interoperability between low-cost and low-power devices of different vendors, focusing on battery life improvement. Some noteworthy employments of ZigBee technology are Home, Building and Industrial Automation as well as E-Health.

This thesis work aims to the development of a software framework which provides abstraction mechanisms for communication and control operations; an example of application, called Home Manager; and, finally, some testing tools, called Virtual Devices, which emulates real household appliances. The ZigBee network is accessed by means of a gateway server (GAL) provided by Telecom Italia SpA, which implements remotization and abstraction features.

In particular, the Home Manager application provides centralized home control features, power saving and power overload protection procedures, and consumption reports, turning out to be both effective and user-friendly. Finally, the framework and the application have been tested in network scenarios with up to six devices, both real and emulated.