One of the reasons I am pushing all my automation to TCP/IP is so that I can control my home, or know its status, while I am traveling. On the network side I have two high speed lines into the home - one DSL the other Cable. I originally put a low end sonic wall up as my firewall, but more recently went to a Sonicwall TZ170. I run Microsoft small business server inside the house.
So with all this robust architecture, I am still having problems getting my VPN to work properly. The other day I spent about 6 hours trying to make it work, but never got it to work right. I can get on my network, but can't route around. Sometimes I can't ping into my network from the WAN side. All in all its a real pain.
What I would really like to do is use SOAP. With SOAP I can setup a messaging system that allows my internal network, devices etc to message me externally either on my laptop or cell phone. I would then write applications for these platforms to manage the message, transmit back, etc. The systems would allow on-demand connectivity for critical control functions with a pretty good level of security.
As an investor, I also am looking at a company named www.gridlogix.com. Gridlogix has a middleware application that integrates with legacy protocols (Mod Bus etc) and translates them into a web service (SOAP). They target large industrial automation applications, but with the Gridlogix software I can integrate all my devices in the home and provide the web services I need to get to the outside.
I have not seen anyone doing a web service in this application so If you have, I would love your thoughts.
