Patent ID: 8190697

Claim:
A method of automatically configuring a master device and a slave device to communicate over a network, the slave device being one of a plurality of slave devices, each of the plurality of slave devices comprising a device unique identifier unique among the plurality of slave devices, the slave device being operative in a slave mode to transmit a direct communication to the master device only when solicited by the master device, the master device operative in a master mode to be otherwise unresponsive to unsolicited direct communications transmitted from the slave device to the master device, the method comprising: configuring the slave device to operate in a pseudo-master mode operative to transmit an unsolicited configuration request message over the network, the unsolicited configuration request message comprising the device unique identifier of the slave device; configuring the master device to operate in a pseudo-slave mode operative to be responsive to an unsolicited configuration request message received over the network from any of the plurality of slave devices, the unsolicited configuration request message comprising the device unique identifier thereof; transmitting, by the slave device, an unsolicited configuration request message over the network, the unsolicited configuration request message comprising the device unique identifier of the slave device; receiving, by the master device, the unsolicited configuration request message over the network; determining a network unique identifier for the slave device unique among all slave devices in communication with the master device over the network and associating the network unique identifier with the received device unique identifier of the slave device; storing, by the master device, the network unique identifier in association with the received unique identifier of the slave device for use when the master device operates in master mode to communicate with the slave device; transmitting a configuration response message over the network, by the master device, the configuration response message comprising the device unique identifier and network unique identifier associated with the device unique identifier of the slave device; receiving the configuration response message by the slave device over the network, the configuration response message comprising the device unique identifier and network unique identifier associated with the device unique identifier of the slave device; and configuring, by the slave device in response to the receiving of the configuration response message, the slave device to be responsive to messages received from the master device identified by the network unique identifier, and, responsive to the configuring, further configuring the slave device to operate in the slave mode.