= Specific Ideas from Eric =
These ideas relate to use cases, architecture, implementation, and other aspects. They are here as they are pre-mature for our stage in the development process.

== Architecture ==
I am REALLY favoring a distributed system based on the network. It could become a centralized system in some cases. All it does is reuse existing architecture and make devices smart enough to communicate with the computers. It would be very extensible.

General idea:
 * smart devices
   * network savvy - all can communicate with each other on the local home network (802.11, ethernet)
   * Zeroconf would be the discovery mechanism
     * it uses multicast packets to deliver enough information onto the local network to allow devices to connect to each other
   * one TCP protocol would be the main communication medium
     * we would want to create a simple "remote control" protocol (based on SNMP or HTTP?)
     * we might use SNMP - using it would not require the zeroconf mechanism (I think, because it does some UDP stuff...)
 * dumb devices
   * these devices should be able to be manufactured cheaply
   * not network savvy
   * would be connected to a smart device and use a simple protocol for communication
   * the smart device would publish the dumb device's information onto the network
 * when you only have one smart device (computer), then it would be centralized - otherwise it would be distributed

 * You would have smart devices that were similar to access points
   * they could connect to dumb devices using any means (serial cable, USB, Bluetooth, Firewire, etc.)
 * All devices could implement more protocols and could share their features with Zeroconf
   * devices could then communicate with each other in whatever protocol they wanted (makes it extensible)