Air freshening network

Abstract

An air freshening network in a home or office environment is more energy efficient and intelligent than conventional devices.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61 / 542,312, filed on Oct. 3, 2011, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention is directed to providing air freshening in a manner that is energy efficient and intelligent. In particular, the present invention uses distributed processing across a network of air fresheners to control the odor level for a given environment.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Devices that contain both a sensor and scent emitter have been described. For example if the sensor is an odor sensor, and the odor senses a malodor, the sensor will cause the scent emitter to emit a diffusible air freshening composition into the air to mask and / or eliminate the offending malodor. However, these devices typically work as a stand-alone device that can only affect a relatively small environment that is immediately surrounding the dev...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention is a system for air freshening and air filtration using multiple scent emitters and sensors. The scent emitters have an emission processor that controls their scent emission and makes decisions based on information received wirelessly from the sensors and other scent emitters in the system. The scent emitter can be a standalone device or part of a larger system. The system can filter air and improve air quality in a home or office. The technical effects of the invention are efficient and effective air fem sening and filtration using advanced technology and wireless communication.

Problems solved by technology

However, these devices typically work as a stand-alone device that can only affect a relatively small environment that is immediately surrounding the device and without regard to other air fresheners that may be elsewhere in the home or office.

Many homes or offices (i.e., macro environments) typically have multiple rooms or micro environments that cannot be readily addressed by a single scent emitting device.

Often, there is an unbalance in scent level as the user travels from one space to another.

The use of a plurality of scent emitting devices fails to provide an optimized air freshening experience throughout the macro environment.

Or the manual scent intensity control simply lacks precision.

Further, a collection of single isolated devices often fail to anticipate the effect of a malodor event that may happen at a single location in the home or office that leads to an undesirable olfactory experience elsewhere in the macro environment.

Current devices fail to address such an event.

A plurality of devices can be utilized to address each micro environment but such an approach fails to leverage the potential advantages of a system, i.e., the devices working in concert together.

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