Data processing: generic control systems or specific application – Generic control system – apparatus or process – Having preparation of program
Reexamination Certificate
2002-05-22
2004-12-21
Knight, Anthony (Department: 2121)
Data processing: generic control systems or specific application
Generic control system, apparatus or process
Having preparation of program
C700S009000, C700S011000, C700S017000, C700S019000, C700S076000, C700S083000, C700S087000, C700S276000, C700S264000, C315S294000, C315S295000, C315S297000, C315S291000, C315S307000, C315S312000, C315S324000, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06834208
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the field of home automation and control systems and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for providing distributed control of dynamically created home automation and control system scenes.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Home automation and control systems are used to control the behavior of an environment such as a home or office building. Home automation and control systems allow home occupants to automate and control the use of electrical products and appliances in and around the house. Home automation and control systems create and launch “scenes,” also called house scenes, involving one or more products and appliances. Examples of the types of products and appliances that can be automated and controlled are lighting, entertainment, cooking, heating, air conditioning, window treatments and landscaping. Examples of specific products and appliances that can be automated and controlled are lights, television sets, sound systems, coffee machines, ovens, furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters, humidifiers and lawn sprinklers. Each product or appliance can be set to a number of different states, i.e., on, off, and, if appropriate, an intermediate level. The controller of an electrical product or appliance, together with its effect on the controlled electrical product or appliance, will be referred to as a “device.” The “load control button” on a device is the button on the device controller that directly controls or affects the electrical product or appliance. The controller may be a physically separate entity from the product or appliance being controlled, or the controller may be physically embedded or integrated into the product or appliance being controlled.
A “scene” includes one (1) or more devices set to a particular state. For example, a morning scene could include the furnace set to 70°, the master bathroom lights on at 50%, the kitchen lights on at 100%, the coffee machine on, the television set in the kitchen on to a particular channel, and the front porch light off. This setting of devices constitutes one scene, and may be triggered by a trigger event also defined by the user, such as the press of a button on a remote control. A different scene may set additional devices and some or all of the members of the one scene to the same or different states. Current home automation and control systems are based on controlling devices through device resources, but these device resources are not interoperable between unlike resources. Current home automation and control systems require someone or something in the programming process to understand the details of the system device resources or each type of device resource in the system to create complex scenes. Current home automation and control systems create and launch scenes using several methods, each of which have significant drawbacks.
One method used by current home automation and control systems is to divide the devices into groups that all respond in basically the same way to a command. Some groups are composed of like type device resources, and other groupings allow mixed type resources, but all like-type device resources are limited to the same actions—i.e., a group command received by like type device resources in the group will force each of those devices to the same state. This method does not provide the flexibility that in one scene some of the same type devices might be on and others off, while in another scene all of the devices might be on. Such an approach is, thus, limited to simple, synchronized scenes. In current home automation and control systems able to create more complex scenes, a central controller is commonly used, with a scene being launched, or triggered, when the central controller detects the trigger event. In response to detecting the trigger event, the central controller sends messages to the devices that are members of the scene directing them to go to their respective scene states. If the central controller fails, scenes can no longer be triggered because the controller can no longer send the necessary messages to the scene member devices to produce the scenes. In effect, if the central controller fails, the entire home automation and control system is rendered unusable. This single point of failure is highly undesirable to users of such systems. Additionally, the use of a central controller creates a heavy load of network traffic, since the central controller must send a message to each scene member device individually. The message traffic on the communication network for a central controller based scene with many member devices grows proportionally with the number of devices. For a scene with a large number of devices, this also causes a time delay time between the start of the scene when the first device gets its message until the last device gets its message. Such heavy network traffic and delay in triggering scene member devices is also undesirable to users of home automation and control systems.
Another method used by current home automation and control systems is to create pre-defined scenes sometimes called home modes. Examples of such home modes are “away” or “home” or “vacation” scenes. A device receiving a scene launch command will know what state the device should be in for the chosen home mode, but the scene state is determined by the manufacturer for a particular device subtype. If the manufacturer defined home mode does not entirely produce the scene state desired by the home user, or different states are desired for the same device types (a night scene has all lights out except a nightlight in the bathroom, as an example) the scene can not be modified. Furthermore, such home automation and control systems can have only one active home mode at a time, and the home mode affects all devices in the system. This is not desirable in a house with multiple users, where each user may want to select a different scene to control the user's local environment at the same time, without affecting any system devices not in the scene desired by the user.
In other current home automation and control systems able to create more complex scenes, a specialized central programming tool is used to create complex scenes that, once programmed, can operate in a distributed fashion—i.e., do not then require a central controller to send multiple messages to set the respective states of multiple devices each time a scene is triggered. However, the central programming tool may or may not be a permanent part of such a home automation and control system; and if the central programming tool is lost or fails, the system cannot be reconfigured. This can be a problem when the user of the home automation and control system wishes to reconfigure the system—particularly when a new home owner finds the central programming tool went with the previous owner's computer or has otherwise been lost.
Also, the central programming tool is typically specialized, in that it is limited to devices types that were known or contemplated when the original home automation and control system was installed. Thus, the central programming tool cannot reconfigure the system to incorporate newly developed device types, such as new media players, environmental control devices, etc., for which the programming tool does not have the requisite programming instructions. Thus, adding such new devices necessitates upgrades to the central programming tool. Furthermore, the addition of devices, whether originally contemplated or not, may reach a number exceeding the central programming tool or central controller limitations for number of devices in a scene.
Therefore, in light of the above, there is a need for a distributed and interoperable home automation and control scene method that provides dynamic complex scene creation but does not increase scene launch message traffic proportionally to the number of devices in the scene and that does not require someone or some entity in the programming process to understand the details of the system devices or each type of devic
Baker Brian D.
Gonzales Greg
White Sara
Christensen O'Connor Johnson & Kindness PLLC
Knight Anthony
Microsoft Corporation
Pham Thomas
LandOfFree
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