Telephonic communications – Telephone line or system combined with diverse electrical... – To produce visual-graphic copy
Patent
1987-06-19
1989-09-12
George, Keith E.
Telephonic communications
Telephone line or system combined with diverse electrical...
To produce visual-graphic copy
H04M 1100
Patent
active
048667617
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
REFERENCE TO MICROFICHE APPENDIX
This specification includes a microfiche Appendix consisting of 7 microfiche having a total of 628 frames.
This invention relates to a meter reading system and more particularly to a meter reading system which uses customer telephone lines without requiring special equipment in a telephone exchange or at a customer's facility and which operates with minimal interference with or annoyance of customers. The system produces accurate data as to the readings of water, gas and electric meters or the like, including peak rate and time-of-day data and it is easily programmable and controllable to facilitate installation and to obtain and store, display and print-out meter data and various analyses of meter data. Operators at a central location can handle a great many readers, on the order of several tens of thousands or more, and the system is highly reliable, efficient and economical. The effective cost per customer per month for equipment, installation, servicing and telephone line usage is minimized.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
There are a great many prior art proposals for using telephone lines for automatic reporting of meter and status data as well as for control of clocks and the time of telephone calls and the reporting of alarm conditions and other remote metering and control applications. In many of the proposals for using telephone lines, an interrogation signal is sent from a receiving station to a reporting station to initiate the sending of a report, the receiving station being either at a telephone exchange or being connected through a telephone line thereto. Such systems may involve ringing of the customer's telephone or the installation of special ring-suppress equipment at the customer's facility or, alternatively, special equipment at the telephone exchange.
In another type of system, a reporting station initiates the making of a report. For example, the Stonor U.S. Pat. No. 3,098,123 discloses a system in which a pulse-dialing operation is automatically performed, followed by the sending of a message to report the condition at the reporting station. The Diaz U.S. Pat. No. 3,357,011 discloses a system in which the call-in time is controlled by a clock at the reporting station, the clock being also usable to trigger periodically transfers of data to a local memory for later transmission to the receiving station upon command.
In addition to the Diaz patent, there are other systems in which calls are made periodically or at preset times, including the Breen U.S. Pat. No. 3,046,339, the Jackson U.S. Pat. No. 3,294,910, the Klein U.S. Pat. No. 3,510,591, the Lindstrom U.S. Pat. No. 4,056,684, the Bocchi U.S. Pat. No. 4,086,434 and the Martin et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,104,486. In the Klein system, call time data are sent to a station to be stored in a memory and to be compared with clock signals to make a call-back at a desired time. The Vittoz U.S. Pat. No. 4,020,628 and the Emile, Jr. U.S. Pat. No. 4,125,993 illustrate systems in which signals may be transmitted through a telephone line to regulate the frequency or set the time at a remote clock or watch.
The National Weather Service of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce has been a leader in the development of automated systems using telephone lines for the reporting of meter data. In a paper entitled: "AUTOMATIC HYDROLOGIC OBSERVING SYSTEM" by J. W. Schiesl, presented at the International Seminar on organization and operation of hydrological services, Ottawa, Canada, July 15, 1976, an "AHOS" system is described in which an Automatic Data Acquisition System (ADAS) includes a computer which operates on a standard interrogation cycle to collect data. Periodically, once every six hours, the ADAS transmits the data to a receiving station or user such as a River Forecast Center or a Weather Service Forecast Office. The system is such that a user may have the capability to request a special interrogation cycle which can be at optional intervals other than the standard cycles
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Schiesl, J. W., "Automatic Hydrologic Observing System", U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Weather Service, Silver Spring, MD, Jul. 1976.
Kidder William L.
Probert Walter L.
Strobel Donald H.
Thornborough Raymond J.
Wachs Dennis L.
Badger Meter Inc.
George Keith E.
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