[6lowapp] Home/Building Automation profiles and communication with other IP-based devices

[Daniel Berenguer <[e-mail]>]

I'm diving into 6LowPAN for the first time and subscribed to the
6LowApp group as a way of following the current work on the definition
of communication schemas for home and building automation. Then, I
read that CoAP is really focusing on how information will be
presented, not the contents of this information. Now that I know that
6LowApp won't define any communication profile I wonder how this later
work will be undertaken. Someone from this list said that the
definition of app profiles should be done by each developer so I
understand that two home 6LowPAN devices will be able to discover each
other and communicate between them but won't be able to "understand"
the data contents and which kind of device they are talking to. Please
correct me if I understood this incorrectly.

I'm a developer of open source home automation equipment and most of
my projects are based on xAP, an open UDP/IP protocol for
home/building automation (http://www.xapautomation.org). Being xAP an
IP-based protocol it could have good synergies with a 6LowApp-based
protocol. However, I wonder how an hypothetical translation between
both protocols should be done. I consider the following possibilities:

1. The xAP team develops a xAP <--> 6LowPAN (with custom profiles)
gateway so that the 6LowPAN information enters the "wired" LAN under
xAP format

2. The 6LowPAN data enters the "wired" LAN through an official CoGII.
Then this data is transformed to xAP format in the LAN.

I think that the second option would be the preferred one from a
6LowApp point of view although the first method brings some advantages
in term of data processing for the xAP integrator.

Thanks for your comments... and feel free to delete this message if
this is not the correct forum for the subject.

Congratulations for your work.

Daniel.