Systems and methods for access and control of hardware device resources using device-independent access interfaces

摘要

Systems and methods are provided that enable seamless access and control of hardware device resources through a common, device-independent interface without the need for device-specific drivers. For instance, system and methods are designed to expose capabilities/functions of hardware devices as web-based services which can be invoked to provide specific services based on the capabilities of the hardware devices.

主权项

1. A computing system, comprising:
a network comprising a plurality of network nodes including one or more device nodes and computer nodes; a network hardware device located at each device node over the network; a web services platform hosted by one or more computer nodes over the network, which provides access and control of the hardware devices over the network through a common, device-independent interface exposing capabilities of the network hardware devices as web services that can be invoked to perform a service; and a web service device adaptor performing as the common, device-independent interface to expose the capabilities of only a specific class of network devices having a common functionality, wherein the specific class of network devices is a printer device class, a display device class or a video capture class, wherein control of two or more of the network hardware devices of the specific class of network devices is aggregated by the web service device adaptor through the common, device-independent interface.