Apple Inc.

Other

Kevin P McLaughlin

Anush G Nadathur

Arun Godfrey Mathias

Jerrold Von Hauck

David T Haggerty

Srinivas Rama

Matthew C Lucas

Li Li

Andrew W Burks

Joe S Abuan

Christopher Brooke Sharp

Yousuf H Vaid

Reed E Olsen

Benjamin A Smith

Ben-Heng Juang

Stephan Vincent Schell

Bob Bradley

Craig P Dooley

Nathan E Carroll

Thomas A Dilligan

Robert William Mayor

Xiangying Yang

Brent Michael Ledvina

Gokul P Thirumalai

Mehdi Ziat

Jahshan A Bhatti

Gregg J Golembeski, Jr

David R Stites

Kevin Duffy

Vinay A Ramaswamy

Stephen Olivier Lemay

Patrick L Coffman

Christopher Daryl Soli

Cyrus Daniel Irani

Dennis Mathews

Sumit Saxena

Serhat S Bucak

Ronald Keryuan Huang

Lukas Michael Marti

Joakim Linde

Ahmer Ali Khan

Avinash Narasimhan

Christopher M Garrido

Ming Jin

Karthick Santhanam

Hsien-Po Shiang

Wenhui Xu

Harlan Haskins

Audra Liu

Andrew Burks

Gregg Golembeski, Jr

A uniform protocol can facilitate secure, authenticated communication between a controller device and an accessory device that is controlled by the controller. An accessory and a controller can establish a pairing, the existence of which can be verified at a later time and used to create a secure communication session. The accessory can provide an accessory definition record that defines the accessory as a collection of services, each service having one or more characteristics. Within a secure communication session, the controller can interrogate the characteristics to determine accessory state and/or modify the characteristics to instruct the accessory to change its state.

Uniform communication protocols for communication between controllers and accessories

In some implementations, a computing device can present accessory state information. For example, the computing device can receive accessory state information from various accessories and present status items representing the current state of the accessories. The status items can be prioritized according to classifications assigned to accessories and/or accessory state information. The status items can be filtered based on a role assigned to the user of the computing device. Additional implementations and details are described in the paragraphs that follow.

Techniques for utilizing a coordinator device

A first device can receive a delegation message from a second device. The delegation message can include a trigger data object that defines a triggered action set including a triggering event and an action to be performed by an accessory device in response to the triggering event. The first device can perform consistency checking of the received trigger data object relative to one or more previously received trigger data objects to determine whether a conflict exists.

Consistency checking of a delegated trigger in an automated environment

An integrated accessory control system can integrate functionality (services) of multiple disparate accessories and provide a unified user interface for interacting with the system via a controller device. An integrated accessory control system can include one accessory that can detect an event or action and send a notification to the controller device and at least one other accessory, such as an Internet Protocol (IP) camera, that can be operated in response to the notification. In response to the notification, a controller device can generate an integrated user interface for interacting with the accessories in the integrated accessory control system. The interface can include a live feed from the IP camera, which can provide a media stream responsive to instructions from the controller.

Integrated accessory control user interface

Techniques for suggesting accessory devices controlled by an application executing on a mobile device are disclosed. A method includes measuring one or more sensor values using one or more sensors of a mobile device and the one or more sensor values are determined from one or more signals emitted by a first one or more accessory devices. An area of a physical space for the first one or more accessory devices can be determined based on the one or more sensor values. A second one or more accessory devices associated with the same area as the first one or more accessory devices can be suggested to a user.

Using in-home location awareness

A relay service can relay messages between controllers and electronically controllable accessory devices that may be located remotely from the controllers. Relaying of messages by the relay service can be decoupled from any knowledge of the functionality of the accessory or the content of the messages. Device identification and relaying of messages can be managed using 'relay aliases' that are meaningful only to the relay service and the endpoint devices (the controller and accessory). The endpoint devices can implement end-to-end security for messages transported by the relay service.

Relay service for communication between controllers and accessories

A data transfer process can include multiple verification features usable by a 'source' device to ensure that a 'destination' device is authorized to receive a requested data object. The source device and destination device can communicate via a first communication channel (which can be on a wide-area network) to exchange public keys, then use the public keys to verify their identities and establish a secure session on a second communication channel (which can be a local channel). The data object can be transferred via the secure session. Prior to sending the data object, the source device can perform secondary verification operations (in addition to the key exchange) to confirm the identity of the second device and/or the locality of the connection on the second communication channel.

Secure transfer of a data object between user devices

An automated environment can include multiple controller devices capable of communicating with multiple accessory devices. The controller devices can automatically elect one of their number as a coordinator device for the environment and can automatically perform a new election if an incumbent coordinator becomes unavailable or resigns. The election processes can be transparent to any users. An elected coordinator can perform various operations to facilitate management of the automated environment, including routing of communications between controllers and accessories.

Selection of a coordinator device for an automated environment

Methods and apparatus for the deployment of financial instruments and other assets are disclosed. In one embodiment, a security software protocol is disclosed that guarantees that the asset is always securely encrypted, that one and only one copy of an asset exists, and the asset is delivered to an authenticated and/or authorized customer. Additionally, exemplary embodiments of provisioning systems are disclosed that are capable of, among other things, handling large bursts of traffic (such as can occur on a so-called 'launch day' of a device).

Apparatus and methods for secure element transactions and management of assets

Growing community of inventors

Waikoloa, HI, United States of America

Kevin P McLaughlin