Things

Things are the fundamental control surface objects in the SOM. Physical devices host one or more Things.

Things provide:

  • Properties that can be monitored, changed, or mutated
  • Methods that take named arguments and return values
  • Child things (children) which it owns and manages

Some hypothetical examples of Things and their relationship to physical devices:

  • A smart light bulb that hosts a single Thing that is used to control and monitor the state of the light bulb.
  • A smart power strip that hosts one Thing per outlet, used to control the state of each outlet and monitor power usage.
  • A proprietary wireless sensor gateway hosting one (or more) Things for each associated wireless sensor, used to monitor temperature and humidity.
  • A device could have any number of automation primitives, with each one being a thing.