Web of Things platform - User guide

Authors

Abstract

This document presents the guide for using the Web of Things platform project done for the Web Application Development course. The project consists of a Web application that allows its users to manage their own smart homes by adding smart devices to the homes, interacting with the smart devices and adding other users to the home.

Registering and logging in to the application

In order for the user to access the application, he first needs to create an account and then login to the application. For registering into the application, the user needs to access the register page and fill in the required fields there:

Register page

After the user has created his account, he is redirected to the login page where he can enter his credentials. After this, he needs to press the Sign In button, which will redirect him to the login page.

Login page

Dashboard

The user dashboard looks like below:

Dashboard page

There is a sidebar menu containing the application logo, the username of the currently logged in user and four buttons: Dashboard, Profile, Help, Logout. The dashboard is the page presented above, the one you get redirected to right after you login. The profile page enables the users to update their credentials, and the logout button ends the current session and redirects the user to the login page.

In the central part of the Dashboard page, the user is presented with four buttons corresponding to the main actions that he can do in the application. At first, the only enabled button is the houses button. When this is clicked, the user is presented with the list of homes that he is a member of, along with his role in that home (which can be either OWNER, MEMBER, CHILD or GUEST), the number of users and the number of devices that belong to the home.

Homes

When selecting a home from the list, all other buttons get enabled and he can also access the users, devices and actions inside that home.

Dashboard when selecting home

For adding a new home, the user needs to press the New Home button at the top of the list. A user can also edit his home in order to rename it or add new users to it by pressing edit home:

Edit home dialog

If the user is the Owner of that home, he also has the option to delete the home inside the Edit Home dialog.

Devices

When selecting the Devices button from the top menu, the user is presented with the list of devices in his home, along with the values of their specific properties and buttons for performing their specific actions (if any):

Devices page

Using the Add Device button, a user can add new devices to his home, by entering the URL of the object's Web of Things specification and selecting a category for the device:

Add new device

After adding the device, it appears automatically in the user's list of devices, along with its associated data:

Devices with actions page

As you can see, the newly added device also has an associated action, which is Fade. By pressing the button corresponding to this action, a dialog opens with a description of the action and the parameters that are required for executing that action:

Perform device action

Profile

The Profile option from the sidebar menu opens the following dialog, which allows the user to change his credentials:

Profile dialog

After updating either his username or his password, the user needs to click the Save button next to that field so that the canges are saved. From this dialog, the user can also delete his profile from the application, but first he needs to confirm his password for security reasons.