71223results about "Electrical testing" patented technology

A method of controlling a motorized window treatment provides for continued operation of the motorized window treatment during an overload or low-line condition. The motorized window treatment is driven by an electronic drive unit having a motor, a motor drive circuit, and a controller. The controller controls the motor drive circuit to drive the motor with a pulse-width modulated signal generated from a bus voltage. The controller is operable to monitor the magnitude of the bus voltage. If the bus voltage drops below a first voltage threshold, the controller stops the motor or reduces the duty cycle of the pulse-width modulated signal to allow the bus voltage to increase to an acceptable magnitude. When the bus voltage rises above a second voltage threshold, the controller begins driving the motor normally once again. During an overload or low-line condition, the controller is prevented from resetting, while driving the motor with minimal interruption to the movement of the motorized window treatment.

To provide a power storage device, an operation condition of which is easily analyzed. A secondary battery includes a sensor that is a measurement unit, a microcontroller unit that is a determination unit, and a memory that is a memory unit. With the sensor, conditions of the secondary battery such as the remaining battery power, the voltage, the current, and the temperature are measured. The microcontroller unit performs arithmetic processing of the measurement results and determines the operation condition of the secondary battery. Further, the microcontroller unit stores the measurement result in the memory in accordance with the operation condition of the secondary battery.

An expert system manages a power grid wherein charging stations are connected to the power grid, with electric vehicles connected to the charging stations, whereby the expert system selectively backfills power from connected electric vehicles to the power grid through a grid tie inverter (if present) within the charging stations. In more traditional usage, the expert system allows for electric vehicle charging, coupled with user preferences as to charge time, charge cost, and charging station capabilities, without exceeding the power grid capacity at any point. A robust yet accurate state of charge (SOC) calculation method is also presented, whereby initially an open circuit voltage (OCV) based on sampled battery voltages and currents is calculated, and then the SOC is obtained based on a mapping between a previously measured reference OCV (ROCV) and SOC. The OCV-SOC calculation method accommodates likely any battery type with any current profile.

Various embodiments are disclosed for a services policy communication system and method. In some embodiments, a communications device implements a service policy for assisting control of the communications device use of a service on a network; and monitors use of the service based on the service policy, in which the implementation of the service policy is verified.

The present invention is generally directed to a system for monitoring a variety of environmental and / or other conditions within a defined remotely located region. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a system is configured to monitor utility meters in a defined area. The system is implemented by using a plurality of wireless transmitters, wherein each wireless transmitter is integrated into a sensor adapted to monitor a particular data input. The system also includes a plurality of transceivers that are dispersed throughout the region at defined locations. The system uses a local gateway to translate and transfer information from the transmitters to a dedicated computer on a network. The dedicated computer, collects, compiles, and stores the data for retrieval upon client demand across the network. The computer further includes means for evaluating the received information and identifying an appropriate control signal, the system further including means for applying the control signal at a designated actuator.

A battery pack has a charge and discharge count measuring part (131) configured to measure the number of times of charges and discharges of a secondary battery based on the summed value of the charge current for the secondary battery, and a decay rate output part (132) configured to compute a decay rate that indicates a degree of decay of the secondary battery based on the number of times of charges and discharges measured by the charge and discharge count measuring part (131) and to output it to a device being a discharge load. For example, the charge and discharge count measuring part (131) repeatedly sums the detected values of the charge current to a predetermined threshold, and counts up the number of times of charges and discharges every time when the summed value reaches the threshold. Accordingly, even though charges and discharges are repeated at finer steps in a relatively narrow voltage range, the number of times of charges and discharges can be counted accurately, and the computing accuracy of the decay rate is improved. In the battery pack in which the secondary battery is accommodated, parameters for detecting the remaining amount of the battery are detected more accurately.

A method for sensing the state of an electrophoretic display includes the steps of applying an electrical signal to a display element, measuring an electrical response for the display element, and deducing the state of the display element from the measured electrical response. Also, the parameters of the display materials are determined using the encapsulated electrophoretic display media as a sensor, either alone or in conjunction with other sensors.

Various embodiments are disclosed for a services policy communication system and method. In some embodiments, an intermediate networking device provides a service intermediary or intermediate connection between a network and one or more communications devices; implements a service policy set for assisting control of the intermediate networking device use of a service on the network, in which the service policy set includes one or more service policies, each policy being associated with either the intermediate networking device or a communications device; and monitors use of the service based on the service policy set; and in which the implementation of the service policy set is verified.

A system for transmitting, collecting and displaying diagnostic and operational information from one or more motor vehicles to a central server connected to a wide area network. The system is designed to be used with an existing on-board diagnostic system found in most motor vehicles manufactured today. The system includes a translator device capable of translating the codes from an on-board diagnostic connector into computer readable files such as ASCII files. The translator device may be connected to an on-board computer that includes a wireless modem capable of connecting to a wireless communication network and eventually to a wide area network. A central server is connected to the wide area network which receives and stores information from the on-board computer. Authorized users may connect to central server via the wide area network and request information therefrom regarding selected motor vehicles. All of the information may be presented in a single interface.

A plasma reactor for processing a workpiece such as a semiconductor wafer has a housing defining a process chamber, a workpiece support configured to support a workpiece within the chamber during processing and comprising a plasma bias power electrode. The reactor further includes plural gas sources containing different gas species, plural process gas inlets and an array of valves capable of coupling any of said plural gas sources to any of said plural process gas inlets. The reactor also includes a controller governing said array of valves and is programmed to change the flow rates of gases through said inlets over time. A ceiling plasma source power electrode of the reactor has plural gas injection zones coupled to the respective process gas inlets. In a preferred embodiment, the plural gas sources comprise supplies containing, respectively, fluorocarbon or fluorohydrocarbon species with respectively different ratios of carbon and fluorine chemistries. They further include an oxygen or nitrogen supply and a diluent gas supply. The controller is programmed to produce flow of different process gas species or mixtures thereof through different ones of said plural gas injection zones. The controller is further programmed to change over time the species content of the gases flowing through different ones of said plural gas injection zones.

A method of fabricating an electronic chip on a wafer in which a first mask at a predetermined lower resolution is developed on the wafer and then etched under a first set of conditions for a predetermined period to achieve a mask that is below the resolution limit of current lithography. The etched mask is then used as a hard mask for etching material on a lower layer.

Contact structures exhibiting resilience or compliance for a variety of electronic components are formed by bonding a free end of a wire to a substrate, configuring the wire into a wire stem having a springable shape, severing the wire stem, and overcoating the wire stem with at least one layer of a material chosen primarily for its structural (resiliency, compliance) characteristics. A variety of techniques for configuring, severing, and overcoating the wire stem are disclosed. In an exemplary embodiment, a free end of a wire stem is bonded to a contact area on a substrate, the wire stem is configured to have a springable shape, the wire stem is severed to be free-standing by an electrical discharge, and the free-standing wire stem is overcoated by plating. A variety of materials for the wire stem (which serves as a falsework) and for the overcoat (which serves as a superstructure over the falsework) are disclosed. Various techniques are described for mounting the contact structures to a variety of electronic components (e.g., semiconductor wafers and dies, semiconductor packages, interposers, interconnect substrates, etc.), and various process sequences are described. The resilient contact structures described herein are ideal for making a "temporary" (probe) connections to an electronic component such as a semiconductor die, for burn-in and functional testing. The self-same resilient contact structures can be used for subsequent permanent mounting of the electronic component, such as by soldering to a printed circuit board (PCB). An irregular topography can be created on or imparted to the tip of the contact structure to enhance its ability to interconnect resiliently with another electronic component. Among the numerous advantages of the present invention is the great facility with which the tips of a plurality of contact structures can be made to be coplanar with one another. Other techniques and embodiments, such as wherein the falsework wirestem protrudes beyond an end of the superstructure, or is melted down, and wherein multiple free-standing resilient contact structures can be fabricated from loops, are described.

A Web-based call routing management workstation application which allows authorized customers to control toll free routing and monitor call center status. An architecture including one or more web servers located in a firewalled demilitarized zone (DMZ) as communications medium between the customer workstations at the customer sites and the enterprise back-end applications providing the call routing management services, provides a secure infrastructure for accessing the enterprise applications via the otherwise insecure public Internet. The present invention enables creation and management of call by call routing rules by a customer with a workstation having an Internet access and a supported Web browser. The customized rules may be tested and / or debugged via the Web-enabled workstation, using a debugger / tester which runs the routing rules under a simulated environment. In addition, customers may provision hierarchies for their business; create, modify or delete agent pools; manipulate capacity tables; and define quota schemes, value lists and schedule tables, all at the customer site via the Web-enabled workstation. The present invention also enables the customers to view near real-time displays of call center ACD statistics and peg counts based on routing rules, as well as, run provisioning and statistical reports on provisioning and statistical data and also to extract the data for further analysis. Additionally, the present invention supports foreign language and branding features on a graphical user interface. An infrastructure is provided which enables secure initiation, acquisition, and presentation of the call manager functionalities to customers from any computer workstation having a web browser and located anywhere in the world.

Various embodiments are disclosed for a services policy communication system and method. In some embodiments, a network device implements a service profile for assisting control of a communications device use of a service on a network, in which the service profile includes service policy settings for the communications device; monitors use of the service by the communications device based on the service profile; and modifies a service policy setting to achieve a service usage goal.

A system for determining service outages and restorations includes an outage management server (OMS) that generates reports of outages and restoration information for metering endpoints. The outages may be caused by faults at various locations in the distribution network. The metering endpoint may include a transmitter having a battery backup that transmits the outage information upon a failure to detect a voltage at the endpoint. The transmission of the information may be filtered based on configurable criteria. The metering endpoints may also inform the OMS when power is restored.