Other than that, if we build each smart device like Nest's, the cost is not acceptable when we are going to have 100 at home, all of which cost > $100 and have so many different apps to control each of them.
The current trend in the public is: making each device HTTP-enabled so that they can talk directly to the web server in the cloud, which in turn to talk to the mobile devices or controller, and vise versa. I see a pretty good implementation here: http://ronguest.com/blog/2013/10/how-to-run-temboo-from-open...
This is a solution that minimize the cost for realizing the IoT available so far. But it still does not scale. The design requires to upload a Python SDK to the memory of the second chip and requires SSL for security. SSL is slow in terms of the performance of a device response. It's redundant. Wi-Fi itself is very secure if the message can be transported on a lower level.
Alternative solutions could be: unify all the smart devices at home using home computer as a central control which will send messages back and forth to the smart phone or remote control. Between the central controlling program and the devices, some type of communication either on the HTTP level or lower level will help. It's not necessary to bring everything onto the Internet, only the web server on the home computer is exposed, which is a lot more secure. This way, your smart phone only need to have one app to control all the smart devices at home.
More aggressive solution is to control the smart devices on a lower level than HTTP from the cloud, so that the cost of building the smart devices can be reduced significantly, keeping the device price minimum change from the traditional devices. That's in the future.
A hub for the IOT. Many companies in this space have their own base stations and the wireless router also acts as a 'hub' for many devices in this space. (Cloud printers, Nest thermostat, etc) A device with more computing capability could evolve into a sort of specialized home server for handling home automation.
If you are having guests over, this hub could schedule your Roomba vacuum to clean the floors before company arrives and not interrupt.
It almost seems like we will need an operating system for handling the complexity of all the 'peripherals,' interactions, and applications in the era of home automation.
Even though web connectivity is very popular, it may be best to have a layer of software that is a little more stable that can mediate all the applications that run on it.
