SmartVisual: a visualisation tool for SmartThings IoT Apps using static analysis

Abstract

SmartThings is one of the most widely used smart home platforms for the internet of things (IoT). SmartApps are IoT applications on the SmartThings platform that enables automation of home devices. SmartApps are event-driven; inputs are received from device events, and outputs are issued to control devices. Understanding the behaviour of IoT applications is a challenge because the inputs and outputs are rarely visible. To tackle the challenge, the proposed approach is to visualise IoT applications as a set of IoT services. The authors propose an event-flow-based visualisation method where a flow from an event to action is viewed as an IoT service. The authors implement a tool called SmartVisual that performs a static analysis on SmartApps to generate a diagram of event flows. The tool also provides a tree model of the static structure of SmartApps and software metrics relevant to the event-driven nature. The tool was applied to 64 SmartApp samples provided by SmartThings. Each SmartApp had four event flows on average, although the most complex SmartApp had 58 event flows, and two inputs and two outputs, and the average length of the event flows was 1.43 methods.

Cloud-Based Fault Prediction Using IoT in Office Automation for Improvisation of Health of Employees

“…The fundamental goal was to address the significance of the agile approach and the importance of risk management towards cutting edge frameworks such as cloud, Fog, and IoT utilizing relevant tools. Whereas, in 2020, Bak et al [ 47 ] proposed an approach that visualizes applications of IoT as a collection of IoT services. They proposed an event-flow-based visualization technique where an IoT service is viewed as a flow from event to action.…”

SmartProvenance: User‐friendly provenance system for internet of things applications based on event flow graphs

“…All potential event‐driven execution paths in a SmartApp can be represented by an event flow graph for the SmartApp, which is constructed statically through static programme analysis at compile‐time [20]. Every piece of execution from the occurrence of an event to an action on a device is called an event flow.…”

“…One limitation of the type of graph presented in Ref. [20] is that every event flow handles only a single event. This type of graph can be extended by combining multiple event flows to represent a cascade of events when one action at the end of the first event flow activates another event, leading to a second event flow.…”

“…We propose a static programme analysis method to uncover all potential event flows. This analysis extends the event flow analysis implemented in our event‐flow visualisation tool SmartVisual [20], which performs static event flow analysis on SmartApps to generate a diagram of any direct event flow. We extend it to uncover a sequence of direct event flows in which each of the two adjacent flows is connected by an action in one event flow triggering an event in another event flow.…”

“…Actions include device command actions that operate on the device, such as 'turn on the light' and 'lock the door', and calling APIs provided by the SmartThings platform (e.g. notify a user with messages or set an action schedule) [20].…”