General FAQs
Device Automation Bus (DAB) is an open source protocol that allows application developers to connect to a living room device and programmatically interact with the device. For example, to start and stop applications, send key press commands etc.
DAB works by enabling a communication bus between a device and a remote actor such as a test client. The protocol for communication used by DAB is MQTT. MQTT is a lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport that is ideal for connecting remote devices with a small code footprint and minimal network bandwidth. DAB builds on top of the MQTT protocol to enable a remote user to connect to a device and perform operations such as starting and stopping an application.
We designed DAB to offer a mechanism to programmatically connect to living room devices that do not have a standard protocol for interaction today. However, DAB can be implemented on all devices, even if they have an existing mechanism of programmatic interaction today.
The DAB protocol was developed as a collaborative effort between Amazon Prime Video, Google and Netflix, Inc.
DAB is an open source protocol and we welcome you to help us improve it.