Module Description

Network technologies cut across many areas of modern day living. IoT use cases range from intelligent infrastructure and smart cities to health care and shopping assistants. More and more devices have been presented in a complicated and various environment. From the client's perspective a problem comes out – how to manage and control these increasing various devices efficiently and conveniently so as to achieve more comfortable, secure and healthy space for living.

The main purpose of the Automation module is to provide a solution for the above problem – a smart control system based on the technologies of Internet of Things. It should embrace the functions of monitor, control and management, security, energy statistics and analysis. Of course the Automation module will not provide alone this functionality. Agility and extendability are required, so new requirements can be met and new abilities provided. It is designed to collaborate with other modules that are part of the solution.

The Automation module implements a rule engine which is an easy to use framework for building event-based workflows. Any incoming event can be an incoming data from devices, device life-cycle event, REST API event, RPC request, etc. Workflow is built from instructions that are executed on an incoming event. There are many types of instructions that can filter, transform or execute some action on incoming event. The instructions are connected with each other with bindings, so the outbound event from the rule's trigger instruction is sent to the next connected instructions.

The Home Automation Manager API and Eclipse SmartHome API are deprecated and incompatible with the new Automation API. For details refer to Migrating from Automation ESH API guide.

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Feature Set

The module provides the following features and functionalities:

Rules and Rule Engine
Instructions and Instruction Handlers
Templates
REST API
Admin API
Web Console Plugin

More information on every component can be found in the System Architecture page.

Known Issues and Limitations

There are no known issues for the newly introduced Automation API.

Module Dependencies

The Automation module works in the OSGi environment and has dependencies on the following:

Framework: The Bosch IoT Gateway Software is required for the module to operate.
Functional Item Management (FIM) Module is required for the Automation Admin which is implemented as Functional Item. It is used to manage the Automation Rules, Templates and Handlers. Additionally, the FIM Module is required for handlers of the rule instructions that use Functional Items to implement their logic.
Scripting module is required for handling the rule instructions that use scripting languages to implement their logic.
History module is required for handling the rule instructions that produce the history entries.
REST module simplifies the communication between Automation module and other systems or cloud services.
GSON is responsible for parsing the Automation JSON resources.
Web Console is required for the Automation Web Console Plugin functioning.

Licensing Information

Check Third-Party Licenses.