Intelligent monitoring and control system for dispensed chilled food product devices

Abstract

A dispenser system chills viscous edible compositions. The dispensing system may have: a storage system for viscous edible compositions; a composition moving system; a composition chilling system; a cooling system; an electromechanical system control component; an electrical system providing power to the dispensing system components; an electrical communication among the electrical system and dispensing system components; a sensor for detecting at least one performance attribute on the moving system, the chilling system, the cooling system and the control system; the sensor providing signals to electronic hardware; the electronic hardware registering sensor signals with a time stamp; and the electronic hardware configured to perform data analysis on the time-stamped signals to direct and record specified undesirable performance in the dispensing system.

Description

RELATED APPLICATION DATA[0001]This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. 120 as a Continuation-in-Part of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 040,054, filed 7 Mar. 2011.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention relates to the field of blending and / or dispensing systems for chilled, viscous, food products such as soft ice cream, custard, gelatin, custard and the like. An intelligent monitoring system includes sensing devices capable of monitoring operational parameters of electro-mechanical components of the chilled food product device, including but not limited to motor current sensing, voltage sensing, volume sensing, flow sensing, temperature sensing, times of operation for components, state of switches, etc. Moreover, intelligent systems can identify, by using analysis algorithms on preferably time stamped data acquired from the sensors, either deficiencies or defects in the apparatus, altered states in the performance ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0009]A sensing system reads one or more parameters of performance in a blending/dispensing system, transmits sensed information to a processor that executes code to determine sensed operating parameters, and transmits control signals to operating elements in the system to maintain or alter operating conditions or operating performance of the operating elements. The sensing system feeds sensed performance information to hardware (e.g., a processor or program specific hardware, e.g., field programmable gated array or ASIC) to identify variations in that specific perf

Problems solved by technology

These devices tend to move volumes of materials at relatively slow speeds so that variations in performance are difficult to detect by visual observation alone.

Small variations in performance can be indicative of numerous undesirable deficiencies in components, efficiency or maintenance of the device.

These small variations are not necessarily easily observed by the user, so prediction of failure in the systems is difficult.

Current devices also offer little benefit to the end user in the form of direct feedback on operational parameters such as time in use, individual components time of use, material volume dispensed, or critical food service parameters such as time since it was last cleaned, filled, product was drawn, storage temperatures, etc.

Current device technology offers none of these monitoring capabilities either locally or remotely.

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