Air freshening network

Abstract

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

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]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[0002]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 device and without regard to other air fresheners that may be elsewhere in the home or office. Furthermore, the sensor and the scent emitter are integrated into a single device (i.e., the scent emitter and sensor are not ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides an air freshening system that includes multiple scent emitters, a sensor, a communication interface, and an emission processor. The scent emitters are responsible for emitting air freshening compositions, and the sensor helps detect the presence of a stimulus. The communication interface connects the scent emitters, allowing them to communicate and exchange information. The emission processor controls the scent emission of each scent emitter and makes decisions based on information received wirelessly. Additionally, the invention also includes an air filtering device with a sensor and an air filtering processor for controlling the air flow through an air filter and making air filtering decisions. The invention also provides methods of eliminating odor or freshening the air using the air freshening system.

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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