A-mail: The intelligent appliance ubiquitous control environment via e-mail protocols

A concept of using e-mail and Usenet protocols for asynchronous control of smart appliances is presented. E-mail and Usenet protocols are used for encapsulating machine-readable and machine generated smart appliance control protocols. Examples of the simple intelligent appliance and laboratory equipment control protocol implementation are described. Open source software products are used for SMTP, NNTP and POP3 servers and clients’ implementation.

A readily available commercial robotic drive train and a motion controller were used to simulate an autonomous smart appliance and a laboratory device. The over e-mail and Usenet control protocol were shown to be an efficient way of controlling intelligent appliances and laboratory equipment in asynchronous mode.