You can imagine that a device can be assigned a unique fingerprint based on a combination of attributes. Device fingerprinting is the technique where relevant data and features about a device are identified, extracted and profiled in order to uniquely identify the device within the home. This can be done across multiple networks within the home; and if paired with a knowledge graph of devices, can be used to automatically retrieve their capabilities and properties. This technology has today enabled many interesting use cases such as device recognition, more intelligent network scanning, intrusion detection or even personalized user experiences.
There are many different networks in the home including IP networks across Wi-Fi and Ethernet; HDMI wired networks connecting entertainment equipment together; and a range of low power wireless networks used in smart home applications such as Zigbee, Zigbee rf4ce, Z-Wave and Bluetooth networks. In traditional device fingerprinting techniques used in IP-based networks, feature extraction and profiling is done at different OSI layers of IP networks to achieve the desired application goals. These are typically focused on networking technologies to identify the device characteristics which limits their reach to other mediums that are available in the home. Another point to note is that as the number and diversity of connected devices within the home continue to rise, it’s typical for manufacturers and providers to make regular firmware updates to them. These updates may sometimes change the device fingerprints and such real-time updates must also be addressed by the device fingerprinting approach chosen. If not addressed, these gaps in the fingerprinting techniques may limit their ability to enable many important use cases that are primarily driven by daily user experiences.
Emerging Applications of Device Fingerprinting
User Experience Improvements
Consumers purchasing smart home devices are looking for solutions that simplify their user experience right from the time when they open the box, starting with set-up and installation of their devices. The initial setup and configuration can be automated utilizing device fingerprinting to retrieve the necessary information and provide an easy out of the box experience.
A good user experience addresses both the out of the box device setup as well as a smooth daily interaction with the devices. Features such as user-friendly names that can be easily recognized by consumers on the Smart TV UI as opposed to "HDMI 1", "HDMI 2"; or proper device types and names instead of generic MAC addresses on a wireless router management page, both address real usability issues for the consumer. At the core of both features is the need to dynamically discover and recognize devices across different networks.
Better user experiences across connected devices, from Smart TVs to Wireless Routers, both out of the box and in the daily use, enabled by device fingerprinting techniques.
Security
According to the Client Computing Group at Intel, the world is expected to have 50 Billion connected devices by 2020! With such a growing number of devices, security remains to be one of the top concerns for the consumers. There are different applications available in the market that are using device fingerprinting techniques to provide security by acting as the primary gatekeeper in the home network. A robust security application can only be achieved with proper device fingerprinting, to uniquely identify and track the devices and subsequently grant access to their services. These applications and services provide necessary monitoring and analytics about the devices through their intuitive user interface, generate alerts on unusual activities and even enable remote access in events of troubleshooting.
50 Billion connected devices by 2020, device fingerprinting and AI-based behavior profiling can protect consumers.
Remote Technical Support
According to Parks and Associates, 50% of Smart home consumers face set-up problems and 32% face technical issues resulting in poor device performance. That being said, remote technical support and system diagnosis have gained immense popularity among the smart homeowners today. According to Customer and Product Experience 360, in the U.S., the average consumer spends as much as 2.5 hours between self-help and technical support to fix the problems with their connected devices. For a technical support to be able to properly address the consumer concerns, they need to have a full understanding of the piles of connected devices within the home.
Let's take a look at a simple yet popular tech support case where a customer is unable to set up the device and ends up making a support call. With the technology at hand, technicians can access the home network to identify the correct device and guide the client with necessary steps. A simple and quick fix of their problems.
Comprehensive information about devices such as their brand name, model number, series number, manufacturer, current capabilities and offerings, their physical and software characteristics and will lead to a correct diagnosis of consumers’ problems. Device Fingerprinting can provide proper information and access to the consumers’ devices for an efficient real-time troubleshooting. Remote diagnostics will also help the technicians to understand the real problems in consumer homes and better prepare for their customer visits.
Customer issues are being diagnosed and resolved remotely by access to the home network through device identification and troubleshooting.
Personalization
Smart home technologies are entering the consumers' homes at a faster pace than ever before, and companies are working towards creating user experiences that are exclusive and revolve around their usage pattern. Device fingerprinting provides a complete understanding of devices in an ecosystem by uniquely identifying them and their properties. This wide dataset of information can help paint a true picture of consumers’ likes, interests and their interaction pattern with the devices. This information can further enable interesting use cases for personalized user experiences and monetization from customized advertisements. It is important to note, the proper balance between personalization and privacy should always be kept in mind, and the technology chosen should take privacy into consideration from the beginning.
Devices within the home along with the consumers' behavior and preferences are bringing about customized user experiences.
Device fingerprinting with QuickSet
QuickSet Discovery and Predictive engines detect device signatures across multiple home networks including HDMI, IP, and Zigbee rf4ce; calculate fingerprints and traverse the largest knowledge graph of devices to uniquely identify a device. With its predictive modeling, QuickSet intelligently identifies devices and their additional attributes. The results obtained across the different networks are merged to provide a single device object definition towards the host application. QuickSet, using its device fingerprinting technique and leveraging the constantly growing knowledge graph of devices, enables support for brand new devices as well as existing devices with changing behavior within the home. When it comes to the control information, QuickSet again goes beyond a single protocol approach for interacting with multiple devices.
QuickSet’s technology today enables many different use cases, primarily driven by the user experiences in the home. QuickSet thrives to provide an unmatched user experience, both out of the box as well as the everyday interaction. By implementing the whole-home discovery and control capabilities embodied in QuickSet, companies and application developers make it possible for consumers to automatically discover and interact with all points of access to content and applications in the home through a single point of control.
It was quickly becoming apparent that we were out-growing our last space and needed a new revitalized medium to communicate with you. As part of our commitment to expanding our reach and democratizing the technology behind connected homes, we are extremely excited to announce the launch of QuickSet Cloud website!
With a range of new content, the new website covers the Product Line; focussing on QuickSet’s core capabilities, the underlying technology, its device knowledge graph and how QuickSet is used every day empowering over half a billion devices globally across major consumer brands.
We will be utilizing this channel to showcase the capabilities of our products. Products built with one goal in mind, to connect you with your home, easily. Products for the home of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. QuickSet Cloud website is a one-stop hub to learn about QuickSet’s technology, features, and the use-cases it enables. It provides guidelines for developers to start building with QuickSet frictionless.
QuickSet Cloud Website: Highlights
The website’s homepage gives a quick overview of QuickSet’s vision and the underlying technology.
The Technology center digs deeper into the data-driven engines that are the building blocks of QuickSet’s framework.
The Device knowledge graph provides a quick overview of what a knowledge graph is, and how this understanding of devices makes QuickSet extraordinary.
All published white papers and videos can be found in the Media section.
To jump-start the journey of building with QuickSet, the Developers page is filled with knowledge base articles, real-time invocation of APIs and tutorials (members only portal)
In future, you will see a steady stream of new content and blog posts covering the broad portfolio of connected devices and services which QuickSet Cloud Services go across, from AV to Security to Energy/Climate control. Don’t forget to subscribe to the latest posts
In the US, consumers spend a daily average of 5 hours watching TV across multiple devices, including Set-top boxes, smart TVs, OTT boxes, media streamers, game consoles, and personal devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Market insights from comScore suggest that consumers are spending an average of 1 hour & 40 minutes on streaming media during this 5-hour window, making it a popular choice of content. Reports from Video Advertising Beaureu indicate that OTT households have nearly tripled since 2013. In a recent survey conducted by Parks and Associates, it was found that 69% of U.S broadband households subscribe to at least one video service and 40% subscribe to two or more. These non-linear services are directly available to the consumers over the internet on their Smart TVs, OTT boxes, Set-top boxes and more.
69% of U.S broadband households subscribe to at least one video service and 40% subscribe to two or more
This abundance of choice in platform, device, and content is forcing consumers to go through the drill of identifying the right devices and fumble through multiple remotes to get to the desired content.
Simple act of Watching TV is now challenging...
In today's home, with increasing number of devices offering streaming services resulting in more ways to consume content than ever before; consumers have to go through many steps starting from identifying which devices they want to use, which remotes go with them, turning on the devices, finding the proper input source, navigating through the apps/channels and finally launching it when all they want is to quickly watch their favorite content. This is a lot!
Beyond the increase in number of streaming devices used, native applications and overlays on Smart TV platforms further complicate the matter. Even when consumers have successfully gone through all steps mentioned above and are seemingly on the right input, in reality, they could still be on the Smart TV's user interface as opposed to the live content from the service provider Set-top Box; content may be hidden behind Smart TV's overlay which is now a popular platform for streaming applications. With the heavy penetration of smart TVs (as much as half (50%) U.S. broadband households), this problem is only getting worse, resulting in increased input confusion from either real input or forced overlays by smart TV platforms.
Beyond the increase in number of streaming devices used, native applications and overlays on Smart TV platforms further complicate the matter… increased input confusion from either real input or forced overlays by smart TV platforms
The expanding competition for “input 1” adds friction in the simple act of watching TV! The unpleasant user experience resulting from the ongoing friction leads to consumer fatigue and they start dropping certain services or use certain devices less frequently.
Similarly, the problem holds true for content consumption using Over The Top boxes, which face a tough competition from incumbents or other streaming platforms such as Smart TVs.
Should the TV experience be a challenge or simple and entertaining? Shouldn't picking up a remote from a service provider be a clear indication to the system on what they want to watch?
What if your devices behave the way you expect them to – anytime, every time?
Other solutions in the market have tried to address these problems but fall short as they are not compatible with a majority of devices already in the home.
QuickSet reduces these frictions and solves the problem such that consumers can watch TV hassle free. After all, watching TV should not be that difficult!
With QuickSet, your content is a touch away!
In the video above, QuickSet enables the consumers to pick up the remote and with a single press of their logo, takes them to their desired content.
QuickSet's One Touch View (OTV) feature leverages a unique device fingerprinting approach to discover the devices, set up the control point, and with a single touch/command take the users to the right content.
When it comes to compatibility, QuickSet's OTV feature solves these problems for a strong majority of consumers, with over 3 times the coverage than other solutions.
QuickSet's OTV has over 3 times the coverage than other solutions
On a Smart TV platform, as a starting point in the content consumption journey, QuickSet enables a unified content dashboard so consumers can directly tune into content across different devices. The latest version of QuickSet, with an expanded set of discovery and control across different wired and wireless protocols, to provide the consumers with a unified platform to navigate and get to the desired content.
As the range of products that are powered by QuickSet evolve with time, we envision that a simple spoken command such as "Launch Netflix" on voice assistants and smart speakers will take the consumers to their favorite content as soon as they name it, without having to worry about the device that offers this app and how to get there. QuickSet will take care of everything. Stay tuned for some exciting updates!
