Electricity: measuring and testing – Electrolyte properties – Using a battery testing device
Reexamination Certificate
2001-06-29
2003-07-01
Toatley, Jr., Gregory J. (Department: 2838)
Electricity: measuring and testing
Electrolyte properties
Using a battery testing device
C446S026000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06586942
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a control apparatus that interfaced with a hand held miniature electronics article.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Traditional portable electronics/electrical devices such as electrical tools or toys draw power from the batteries installed inside the devices. The number of batteries required depends on the working voltage specified by the circuit utilized. For many electronics circuits, three batteries are needed to provide a typical working voltage between 3V to 4.5V. The working voltage required by many microcontroller chips are in between 3V to 6V. In order to provide a reasonable working battery life to a device drawing a current over 100 mA, such as the products that comprise a light bulb, motor or speaker, the size of the batteries selected are typically of AA, C or D size batteries. These batteries not only add considerable weight to the device, it limits the ability of the designer to shrink the product size. It is the objective of this invention to provide a cordless system that does not required bulky batteries to be built inside a hand held article of sales.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is firstly directed to a hand held article of sales having an electrical circuit. This electrical circuit may include an electricity to light transducer such as light bulb or LED. It may comprise a motor to provide motion output. Alternatively, it may also include a speaker to generate sound, music or voice messages. The circuitry may also include other different kinds of applications circuits such as a design to identify itself from other articles of the same family. The first characteristics of this hand held article is that there is no battery installed inside the body of the article. Accordingly the size, weight and cost of the article are reduced. At least two conductive contact terminals are provided on two different locations of the article, preferably at the two sides, suitable to be held by the index finger and the thumb of a human hand. When electrical power is fed through these conductive contact terminals, the internal electrical circuit is activated. In order to feed power to this hand held article, a separated controller compartment having mating contact terminals connecting to a power source and/or appropriate interfacing circuits are provided. In a preferred embodiment, these contact terminals are specially designed for attaching to the fingers of an user's hand, such as the thumb and the index finger. Alternately, a structure is provided enabling the motion of the index finger and a thumb to position two contact terminals of the controller to the target article. When the user picks up the article, the mating contact terminals located at the fingers touch the conductive contact terminals of the article. Accordingly power is provided to the electrical circuit of the article through the finger contact action. When the electrical circuit of the article is powered and activated, it may generate responses such as light, motion or sound according to the nature of the electrical circuit built inside the article.
The finger contact terminals are wired to the compartment that provides the power source required. This compartment can be attached to the hand, the wrist, the arm, the waist, attached to any other location of the human body or kept inside a pocket. A velcro tape is preferred for fast attachment of the compartment to the human body. The actual power source may also be represented by one or more energy storage device, such as batteries, or a wall mounted adapter. For a louder sound to be generated, the small speaker installed at the miniature size article can be replaced by a larger speaker and relocated to the power supply compartment. In this case, the audio signal may be either obtained from a circuit built inside the article, then amplified in the controller compartment to drive the larger speaker. Alternately the electrical circuit embedded inside the target article may send a trigger signal to the sound chip located inside the controller compartment for driving the speaker. If three pairs of finger contact terminals are provided to bridge between the article and the control compartment, the audio signal and the battery connection circuit may share a common wire. If only two pairs of contact terminals are provided, the AC audio signal may be superimposed onto the DC power supply line, for the circuit to share the two conducting wires.
In the application when the audio signal is provided by the control circuit located inside the controller compartment, the electrical circuit located inside the target article provides an identity or a triggering signal to the control circuit through the finger contacts. Accordingly, different sounds may be generated from the compartment control circuit according to which external article is picked up by the finger contacts. In addition to sound, other supporting circuits such as a display panel, LEDs and/or control buttons can be added to the compartment to provide additional features for enriching the product package.
The wires connecting in between the finger contacts and the compartment are preferably to be flexible, or adjustable to suit for different hand sizes. The finger contact terminals can be designed to be part of a ring, a finger cap, or a glove for attaching to the tips of a finger. In order to avoid accidental short circuiting the power source when the two finger contact terminals are touching each other, a short circuit sensor, and/or other protection circuit such as analog to digital (A/D) feed back circuit, a current limiter, a fuse or a high current shut down circuit can be provided to prevent any short circuit hazard. Alternately, a finger tip contact terminal can be structured only for touching the contact terminals of the target articles but not the adjacent finger tip contact terminal. For example, each finger tip contact terminal can be protected by a protruded non-conductive wall so that two finger tip contact terminals are not allowed to touch each other. However, the mating conductive contacts on the article side can be formed to provide a smaller protruded shape so that they are free to be contacted by the finger contact terminals.
Preferably a family of different target articles having similar contact designs are to be provided to enrich the value of the package. A first preferred embodiment of the article is a miniature flashlight having a light bulb or a LED connected to two contact terminals located at the opposite sides of the flash light. When the fingers pick up the flashlight, electricity is provided from the battery compartment, conducted through the contact terminals for lighting up the light bulb or the LED. A modification of the concept is to provide a light bulb or LED inside a flying object such as a dart, a ball, or any other projectile object. An energy storage device such as a miniature battery or a capacitor can be built inside this projectile object to continuously light up the LED after the flying object left the hand of the user. The energy storage device will continue to light up the light bulb or LED for a short period of time after external power is discontinued.
Other embodiments of the article include different toy articles, such as dolls, action figures, toy characters, toy size wheeled vehicles, airplane, helicopter, or toy size electrical hand tool. A motor is included in many of these toy articles to provide motion response when the target article is picked up. It should be noted that although many toy articles such as the wheeled vehicles should be miniature reproductions of the life size products, the application of the invention on electrical tools can be extended to regular life size tools.
In the case the target article is a member of a toy family, such as dolls, wheeled vehicles or action figures, an identifying circuit can be built inside the toy to differentiate one member of the family from another. When the toy is picked up, the interface and/or controller circuit inside the compartment rea
LandOfFree
Hand mounted control apparatus does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Hand mounted control apparatus, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Hand mounted control apparatus will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3053491