Transmission system, hub and client

Abstract

The present invention relates to a transmission system comprising a host controller (10), a hub (20), at least one client (30) and at least one sensor (40), wherein the hub (20) is informationally connected to the host controller (10) via a first communication interface (50), the hub (20) is informationally connected to the at least one client (30) via a two-wire bus (60) and is configured, on the basis of the two-wire bus (60), to provide a supply voltage for the at least one client (30) and to carry out data communication with the client (30), and wherein the client (30) is informationally connected to at least one sensor (40) via a second communication interface (55) and is configured to transmit data received from the sensor (40) to the host controller (10) via the hub (20).

Description

Prior ArtThe present invention relates to a hub, a client and a transmission system comprising such a hub and such a client.In numerous applications (e.g. household appliance applications, industrial applications, etc.), communication protocols are increasingly used, which enable integration of sensors. As a basis for networking sensors, various interfaces are frequently used which require at least four cores for providing a supply voltage and for data transmission (e.g. SPI, I 2 C, CAN, Profibus, Ethernet, etc.).These interfaces have not been specifically developed with respect to communication between sensors and a host controller, but for general digital communication. This has an effect, for example, in that only a limited line length between sensors and a host controller is possible on the basis of these interfaces.US2005024066A1 discloses a technique for providing a supply voltage and performing signal transmission between two electrical devices via a single pair of wires.Disclosure of the InventionThe transmission system according to the invention has a host controller, a hub, at least one client and at least one sensor. The transmission system is, for example, a transmission system which can be used in a household appliance, an industrial application, a medical technology device, an application of home and / or garden automation, in a vehicle, etc.The host controller can in principle be any computing unit which assumes a central function (e.g. a central controller) within the transmission system or an application having the transmission system, for example by the host controller requesting and / or storing and / or processing different data which can be transmitted by means of the transmission system, etc.In the broadest sense, the hub is to be understood as a node of the transmission system via which one or more communication partners in the transmission system are set up to be connected to the host controller by information technology. A configuration of the hub as a physical node to which a plurality of communication partners can be connected, for example, in a star shape is not absolutely necessary, but is possible, with respect to the hub according to the invention. Instead, the hub may be a logical level node. Moreover, the inventive hub can advantageously provide further functions which are usually not provided for a conventional hub in a network environment etc., such as a voltage supply function and / or a server function within a subnetwork of the inventive transmission system. In general, the use of the term "stroke" is not intended to restrict the functions that can be provided by the stroke.In the broadest sense, the at least one client represents a function as a terminal, i.e. as a communication partner for the hub, without thereby carrying out restrictions with regard to a functionality of the at least one client.The at least one sensor is, for example, a temperature sensor, a brightness sensor, a current sensor, a voltage sensor, a position sensor, a speed sensor, an acceleration sensor or a sensor differing therefrom. In addition, the sensor is also to be understood in the broadest sense as a sensor which is configured to monitor a user interface with regard to an actuation and / or setting etc.Specifically, according to the invention, the hub has a first communication interface, via which the hub is connected to the host controller by information technology. The first communication interface can be, for example, a conventionally used interface for a sensor connection.According to the invention, the hub is additionally connected via a two-wire bus in terms of information technology to the at least one client and is set up on the basis of the two-wire bus to provide a supply voltage for the at least one client and to carry out data communication with the client. As a basis for such a two-wire bus, for example, a protocol known from the prior art, such as PSI5 or the like, can be used, which can be adapted according to the invention, for example. In addition, any other known or new protocols / interfaces can be used, via which both supply of clients with electrical energy and data communication can take place.The client is connected via a second communication interface to at least one sensor using information technology and is configured to transmit data obtained from the sensor to the host controller via the hub. The second communication interface can be identical or different from the first communication interface.It should be noted in general that the first communication interface and the second communication interface can in principle be any interfaces which can represent, inter alia, any protocol-based interfaces and / or interfaces in which electrical components are connected via wires and / or conductor tracks for a direct transmission of signals (e.g. analog signals). Accordingly, connections of individual electrical components are also to be regarded as communication interfaces according to the invention, which can be electrically contacted with one another (e.g. by means of a soldered connection, etc.).It should be further generally noted that the transmission system may preferably have a plurality of clients according to the invention. In addition, it is possible that the client and at least one sensor (e.g. a temperature sensor) may be formed in a single physical component or may be separate physical components. It is also conceivable that the hub and host controller may be configured as a single physical component or as separate physical components.The transmission system according to the invention offers the advantage, among other things, that scalability and / or flexibility of change of the transmission system according to the invention can be improved in comparison with a conventional (direct) connection of sensors to a host controller, since no adaptations of the interfaces of the host controller are required, for example, when adding or removing clients and / or sensors within the transmission system.A further advantage of the present invention is that a distance between the sensor and the host controller can be increased compared to a conventional sensor application by the two-wire bus connected therebetween according to the invention by using a two-wire bus with correspondingly suitable transmission properties.The dependent claims show preferred developments of the invention.Further preferably, the first communication interface and / or the second communication interface implements an SPI protocol and / or an I 2 C protocol and / or a UART protocol. The use of the aforementioned protocols or similar protocols offers the advantage that they can generally be implemented cost-effectively and are usually sufficient for transmitting sensor data over short line lengths. As described above, it is possible that the first communication interface and the second communication interface realize identical protocols. This can result, for example, from the fact that a conventional transmission system for transmitting sensor data is expanded according to the invention (by interposing the hub, the two-wire bus and the at least one client) in order, as described above, to achieve, for example, greater flexibility and / or scalability and / or a greater distance between respective sensors and the host controller. It should also be noted that the second communication interface can be composed of a multiplicity of communication interfaces which realize protocols which are identical or at least partially different from one another, such that a plurality of sensors which realize either identical protocols or different protocols can be connected to a respective client.The two-wire bus is further advantageously designed and / or configured as a low-energy bus to transmit data over a line length of up to 4 m, preferably of up to 8 m and in particular preferably of up to 10 m or more. Alternatively or additionally, the two-wire bus is advantageously configured to carry out a data transmission with a transmission rate of up to 500 kbit / s or more. The latter offers the advantage, among other things, that a plurality of clients with respective sensors can be connected to the hub or the number of clients can optionally be easily extended, since such a transmission rate is often sufficient for the transmission of a plurality of sensor data. Accordingly, a suitably high transmission rate of the two-wire bus allows configuration flexibility of the transmission system according to the invention to be increased.In an advantageous embodiment of the present invention, the hub and respective clients connected to the hub implement a master / slave system in which the hub functions as master and the respective clients function as slaves, wherein the slaves are controlled by the master to carry out a data communication. In this case, the master can specify transmission time slots for the respective slaves, for example, within which the respective slaves can transmit and / or receive data.In a particularly preferred embodiment of the present invention, the client is configured to generate a supply voltage adapted to respective sensors connected to the client on the basis of the supply voltage provided by the hub in order to supply the sensors with electrical energy provided by the hub. In a case in which a plurality of sensors are connected to a client and these sensors require different supply voltages, the client is preferably configured to provide a plurality of different supply voltages adapted to the respective sensors. Alternatively or additionally, the client is configured on the basis of a temperature sensor of the client to detect a temperature of the client and / or of a sensor arranged in the region of the client and to provide the temperature information to the hub and / or the host controller via the two-wire bus. Such a temperature sensor can be a temperature sensor which is connected via the second communication interface of the client or which is connected to the client via an interface differing from the second communication interface (e.g. by a direct connection of a sensor line). The latter case can be configured, for example, in such a way that the temperature sensor is integrated into a chip of the client and / or is connected to such a chip within a housing of the client. In this way, it is possible to achieve temperature monitoring of the client and / or of one or more sensors connected to the client, on the basis of which it is possible to determine an operating state (e.g. an error state) of the client and / or of the sensor.In a further advantageous embodiment of the present invention, the client is configured to acquire data from the sensor connected to the client in accordance with configuration data which are provided by the hub and / or are stored in the client. By means of the configuration data, it is possible, for example, to define a transmission interval and / or retrieval interval of sensor data to the hub and / or a selection of sensor data to be transmitted by the client. The configuration data may be at least partially persistently stored in the client itself or transmitted to respective clients by the hub and / or host controller during system startup and / or during transmission system runtime. It is also possible that the configuration data between the respective clients can deviate from one another at least partially in order to achieve a suitable adaptation to a respective client and / or sensor. Further, based on the configuration data, it is possible to set respective packet sizes for data to be transmitted. In summary, on the basis of the configuration described above, the advantage can be achieved, inter alia, that the clients are individually configurable and / or that sensor data can be initially collected by the respective clients (e.g. until a predefined time interval has elapsed and / or until a buffer of the client has reached a predefined maximum fill level, etc.) and subsequently transferred to the hub in a bundled manner. In this way, the stroke and / or the two-wire bus can be relieved accordingly. In addition, by forwarding only the currently required sensor data to the hub based on the configuration data by the client, a further relief of the hub and / or of the two-wire bus can be achieved.In addition, it is possible for the hub and / or the at least one client to be configured to carry out data communication via the two-wire bus by means of current and / or voltage modulation. This can be defined differently, for example, depending on a respective communication direction.Particularly preferably, the hub is configured to automatically retrieve data from one or more clients on the basis of a data sequence control, wherein the retrieval of the data takes place in each case at predefined time intervals (e.g. in a so-called "loop mode") and / or on an event basis. Such a process control is carried out, for example, on the basis of process configuration data which can be stored in the hub itself and / or provided by the host controller. By using such a sequence control for triggering the respective clients (e.g. for activating and / or deactivating clients and / or for defining required sensor data in the clients) and / or for retrieving data from the respective clients, it is accordingly possible to achieve a relief of the host controller, since not all individual data have to be actively requested by the host controller. Further advantageously, the hub is configured to store data obtained from one or more clients in a storage unit of the hub and to transmit these to the host controller at predefined time intervals and / or event-based (e.g. upon request by host controllers and / or when a predefined storage fill level threshold is reached, etc.). This offers a further relief possibility for the host controller, which, depending on a data volume arriving in the hub and / or a definition of the storage fill level threshold, can lead to the host controller being able to shift into an energy saving mode (e.g. a "sleep mode") between respective data transmissions by the hub.In addition, a hub according to the invention of a transmission system is proposed, wherein the hub is configured to be connected to at least one client via a two-wire bus in terms of information, to provide a supply voltage for the at least one client on the basis of the two-wire bus and to carry out data communication with the client.Furthermore, a client according to the invention of a transmission system is proposed, wherein the client is configured to be connected to a hub via a two-wire bus, in order to be supplied with a supply voltage via the two-wire bus and to carry out data communication with the hub. The client is further configured to be connected to at least one sensor by information technology via a communication interface, to convert the supply voltage provided by the hub into a supply voltage adapted to the sensor and to provide this to the sensor. The client is finally configured to transmit data obtained from the sensor to the hub via the two-wire bus.Brief Description of the DrawingsHereinafter, embodiments of the invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawing, the following is: FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of an exemplary embodiment of a transmission system according to the invention having a hub according to the invention and a multiplicity of clients according to the invention.Embodiments of the InventionFIG. 1 shows a block diagram of an exemplary embodiment of a transmission system according to the invention having a hub 20 according to the invention and a multiplicity of clients 30, 32, 33, 34 according to the invention.The transmission system, which is a transmission system arranged in a household appliance here, also has a host controller 10 designed as a microcontroller and a plurality of sensors 40, 40'.The hub 20 is connected via a first communication interface 50 designed as an SPI interface for information technology to the host controller 10 and via a two-wire bus 60 for information technology to the plurality of clients 30, 32, 33, 34, wherein the two-wire bus 60 is designed as a low-power bus.The hub 20 is additionally configured to provide a supply voltage to the plurality of clients 30, 32, 33, 34 and to perform data communication with the clients 30, 32, 33, 34 at a transmission rate of 500 kbit / s based on the two-wire bus 60.The clients 30, 32, 33, 34 are each connected via second communication interfaces 55, 55' to respective sensors 40, 40' using information technology and are configured in this way to transmit data obtained from the sensors 40, 40' to the host controller 10 via the hub 20.The second communication interface 55 and the second communication interface 55' here implement, for example, different communication interfaces with different protocols. In addition, the sensors 40 are sensors designed differently from the sensors 40'.It can also be seen from FIG. 1 that a number of sensors 40, 40' which are each linked to a client 30, 32, 33, 34 can be different. In addition, it is possible that the sensors 40, 40' can be connected to the respective clients 30, 32, 33, 34 via separate lines and thus via separate second communication interfaces 55, 55' and / or via a shared second communication interface 55, 55'.The sensors 40 are designed here, for example, as temperature sensors, while the sensors 40' are designed here, for example, as voltage sensors.Moreover, the hub 20 is configured to perform data communication with respective clients 30, 32, 33, 34 by means of voltage modulation on the two-wire bus 60, while the clients 30, 32, 33, 34 are each configured to perform data communication with the hub 20 by means of current modulation.The data communication between the hub 20 and the respective clients 30, 32, 33, 34 is based here on a master / slave system in which the hub 20 functions as master M and the respective clients 30, 32, 33, 34 function as slaves S with respect to the two-wire bus 60, wherein the slaves S are controlled by the master M to carry out a data communication.It should be noted that master / slave communication is also provided between host controller 10 and hub 20 and between clients 30, 32, 33, 34 and their respective sensors 40, 40'. It should be further noted that, for reasons of clarity, only a part of the master / slave interfaces of the respective components of the transmission system is identified with reference symbols and that the master / slave interfaces, which are not identified, are produced analogously to the identified master / slave interfaces.The hub 20 is also configured to automatically retrieve data from the clients 30, 32, 33, 34 on the basis of a data sequence control without having to be addressed by the host controller 10 for this purpose. The data are retrieved here at respectively predefined time intervals for respective sensor data.Furthermore, the hub 20 is configured to store data obtained from the clients 30, 32, 33, 34 in a storage unit 25 of the hub 20 and to transmit this data to the host controller 10 on an event basis, wherein an event triggering the transmission is present whenever a predefined fill level threshold of the memory 25 is reached.References included in the specificationThis list of documents cited by the applicant has been produced in an automated manner and is only included for the better information of the reader. The list is not part of the German patent application or utility model application. The DPMA does not take any adhesion for any faults or omissions.Patent Literature citedUS 2005024066 A1

[0004]

Claims

Transmission system comprising - a host controller (10), - a hub (20), - at least one client (30), and - at least one sensor (40), wherein - the hub (20) is connected via a first communication interface (50) via information technology to the host controller (10), - the hub (20) is connected via a two-wire bus (60) via information technology to the at least one client (30) and is configured on the basis of the two-wire bus (60) to provide a supply voltage for the at least one client (30) and to carry out a data communication with the client (30), and - the client (30) is connected via a second communication interface (55) via information technology to at least one sensor (40) and is configured to transmit data obtained from the sensor (40) via the hub (20) to the host controller (10).Transmission system according to claim 1, wherein the first communication interface (50) and / or the second communication interface (55) realize - an SPI protocol, and / or - an I 2 C protocol, and / or - a UART protocol.Transmission system according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the two-wire bus (60) - is designed as a low-energy bus, and / or - is configured to transmit data over a line length of up to 4 m, preferably of up to 8 m and in particular preferably of up to 10 m, and / or - is configured to carry out a data transmission at a transmission rate of up to 500 kbit / s.Transmission system according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the hub (20) and respective clients (30, 32, 33, 34) connected to the hub realize a master / slave system in which the hub (20) functions as master and the respective clients (30, 32, 33, 34) function as slaves, wherein the slaves are controlled by the master to carry out a data communication.Transmission system according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the client (30) is configured to generate, on the basis of - the supply voltage provided by the hub (20), a supply voltage adapted to respective sensors (40) connected to the client (30) in order to supply the sensors (40) with electrical energy, and / or - to detect a temperature of the client (30) and / or of a sensor (40) arranged in the region of the client (30), and to provide the temperature information to the hub (20) and / or to the host controller (10) via the two-wire bus (60).The transmission system according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the client (30) is configured to acquire data from the sensor (40) connected to the client (30) in accordance with configuration data provided by the hub (20) and / or stored in the client (30).Transmission system according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the hub (20) and / or the at least one client (30) is configured to carry out data communication via the two-wire bus (60) by means of current and / or voltage modulation.Transmission system according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the hub (20) is configured - to automatically retrieve data from one or more clients (30, 32, 33, 34) on the basis of a data flow control, wherein the retrieval of the data takes place in respectively predefined time intervals and / or event-based, and / or - to store data obtained from one or more clients (30, 32, 33, 34) in a storage unit (25) of the hub (20) and to transmit these to the host controller (10) in predefined time intervals and / or event-based.Hub (20) of a transmission system, wherein the hub (20) is configured to - be connected via a two-wire bus (60) in terms of information technology to at least one client (30), - provide a supply voltage for the at least one client (30) on the basis of the two-wire bus (60) and to carry out a data communication with the client (30).Client (30) of a transmission system, wherein the client (30) is configured - to be connected to a hub (20) via a two-wire bus (60), in order to be supplied with a supply voltage via the two-wire bus (60) and to carry out data communication with the hub (20), - to be connected to at least one sensor (40) by information technology via a communication interface (55), - to convert the supply voltage provided by the hub (20) into a supply voltage matched to the sensor (40) and to provide said supply voltage to the sensor (40), and - to transmit data obtained from the sensor (40) to the hub (20) via the two-wire bus (60).

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