Patent ID: 7257661

Claim:
A scalable home-control system and network, comprising: a platform ( 100 ) providing for a grouping of processing devices ( 110 ), control processors ( 120 ), and ancillary units ( 130 ) on plug-in cards; a plurality of serial data busses ( 150 ) disposed in the platform ( 100 ) and arranged in parallel as a single, extendable communications backbone for the platform, and such that data traffic can be split across one or more of the serial buses ( 150 ), and each serial bus ( 150 ) includes a self-timing mechanism to enable bandwidth and data throughput scalability; a plurality of plug-in slot connectors with each such slot connected in parallel across each and all of the plurality of serial buses, and thereby provide a hot swappable plug-in point for each plug-in card; a bus controller ( 210 ) for using one of said serial buses ( 150 ) as a control channel, and providing for device allocations to use said control channel to request and be granted the exclusive use of any other of the other serial buses, wherein a resource allocation for one application can be accommodated without impacting any other allocations; a bus interface controller ( 160 ) provided on said plug-in cards, and providing for the sending and receiving of data over selected ones of said serial buses ( 150 ) that have been allocated to it by the bus controller ( 210 ); a plurality of filter processors ( 115 ) disposed in said processing devices ( 110 ) and arranged in a routing matrix, and connected to a corresponding bus interface controller ( 160 ), herein each filter processor ( 115 ) performs a particular task on a data item and passes it to a next filter processor ( 115 ) in lock-step fashion; and a user interaction device ( 360 ) for locally communicating commands and status with a user, and interfaced with at least one of the processing devices( 110 ); wherein, such is configured to support legacy devices in existing home control networks.