Approved by China Household Electrical Appliances Association, CHEAA standard Cloud to Cloud Interconnection for Smart Household Appliances, numbered T/CHEAA 0001—2017, was officially released on Nov 8th 2017, and has since taken effect. As China’s first association standard tapping into smart appliance interconnection, it offers a solution to the interconnectivity and interoperability among devices of different brands through a cloud-to-cloud approach.
It is learned that, the standard sets out five parts: (1) Connection, including HTTP/HTTPS interface, JSON format, POST and UTF-8 coding; (2) Devices, including device binding, device control, device query and status report; (3) Users, including user logging in, user logging off, user identity authentication and accounts connecting; (4) Data, including function model, data model and command and control model; (5) Security, including TLS, mutual authentication and user identity authentication.
Smart Appliance Interconnectivity and Interoperability Work Group of CHEAA was established in 2015 with 7 founding members: Haier U+, Midea, BSH, Changhong, Hisense, TCL and Skyworth. In the following year, the work group developed a draft standard based on a thorough study of users’ demands, setting out the device model and data model of devices of 9 categories. In 2017, CHEAA demonstrated the interconnectivity and interoperability of devices from various brands on site at AWE 2017 in March. After that, the work group expanded its scale to include Xlink, Konka, Galanz, Xingxing and Samsung.
What’s worth noticing is that, Cloud to Cloud Interconnection for Smart Household Appliances is an integral part of the whole Cloud-to-Cloud Interconnection system, which consists of technical standards, management standards, standard SDK, etc. Technical standards cover the freshly released Cloud to Cloud Interconnection for Smart Household Appliances, and the yet-to-come device model and data model of products of 9 categories. Management standards include standard on the coding of common identification codes of smart appliances, and standard on the management and assignment of identification codes used on clouds. The cloud-to-cloud project will be standardized by SDK, testing and certification.
It is learned that, the on-site demonstration at AWE 2017 proved the feasibility of the interconnectivity project. To date, the work group is developing SDK. At AWE 2018, CHEAA is prepared to showcase the interactions under two scenarios-living room and kitchen, with products of 15 categories from 10 enterprises on display.
Adopting an innovative approach, the standard integrates open standards with SDK to meet the industry needs. It leads the innovation of standardization work. Jiang Feng, President of China Household Electrical Appliances Association, says: releasing this standard is only our first step, marking the launch of our revision work. The work group will continue to update this standard to reflect technological improvements.