10192 results about "Home appliance" patented technology

A home control and automation system and method. The system generally includes one or more wireless remote controls, a plurality of appliances (including network enabled appliances and traditional legacy appliances in the exemplary system), associated control centric devices, and associated content centric devices. Various methods for control and operation of appliances in the networked home control and automation environment are disclosed. Specifically, methods are disclosed which enable advanced home control features such as location based control setup and operation, network enabled legacy appliances and system integration, save and recall capabilities for appliance and media states, generic command based appliance controls, dynamic/complex macro command generation, and Internet based control capabilities from remote locations are disclosed in conjunction with the system of the current invention.

Disclosed are what I call “Reconfigurable Tactile Control Displays” particularly suited for applications such as automobile instrument panels where large displays and controls are desirable to provide a wide range of information, with minimal driver distraction and the safe input of data to vehicle subsystems or for communication based activities. Preferred embodiments utilize rear projection displays with electro-optically sensed controls and offer, at low cost, a maximum of reconfigurability to different car lines, drivers, and tasks. Also disclosed are novel implementations for military vehicles, and other applications such as control of appliances, heating and other household functions which may share common control and display presentation with those used in the vehicle.

An integrated remote controller and a main set-top-box therefor, wherein the integrated remote controller performs communication with the main set-top-box of home network system through WLAN and provides appliance control signals to a corresponding appliances connected to the main set-top-box through wires or wirelessly. Every home networked household appliance can be controlled by one integrated remote controller through intuitive and easy user interface, irrespective of where a user is, whereby the user can easily control any appliance, check a control result in response to a control request right away, and check or control the status of appliances through a regular monitoring function. As a result, user mobility, convenience, and functionality can be maximized.

A control server, or similar central processor, manages the distribution of data (including audio and video), voice, and control signals among a plurality of system components connected via a wired and/or wireless communications network. The system components include audio/visual components (such as, televisions, monitors, PDAs, notepads, notebooks, MP3, portable stereo, etc.) as well as household appliances (such as, lighting, ovens, alarm clocks, etc.). A portable controller allows a user to access and control the system components from any location within a controlled residential and/or non-residential environment, including its surrounding areas. The portable controller includes a user and management interface that contains customized control screens for the system components. The control screens are stored in a hierarchical architecture that is searchable by region or component type.

Applications, systems and methods for securely and remotely operating a remote computer from a local computer over a network while providing seamless, firewall-compliant connectivity. Secure and remote operation includes authenticating at least one remote computer for connection to at least one computer over the network and/or at least one local computer for connection to at least one remote computer over the network; establishing a secure connection between the at least one local computer and the at least one remote computer over the network; and integrating a desktop of at least one remote computer on a display of at least one local computer. The connections may be made over a public network, as well as through multiple firewalls without loss of functionality. A method of accessing and using at least one remote computer from a local computer over a public network may include centrally authenticating, at a location having a public address, a first computer having a first, firewall protected private address; creating a first firewall compliant connection between a publicly addressed connection server and the first computer upon authentication of the first computer; establishing a second firewall compliant connection between the publicly addressed connection server and a second computer having a second firewall protected private address; establishing a private-to-public-to-private communications tunnel, wherein the connection server routes communications from the first computer through the first firewall compliant connection and the second firewall compliant connection to the second computer, and from the second computer through the second firewall compliant connection and the first firewall compliant connection to the first computer; and performing at least one further step selected from the group consisting of: integrating a file structure of accessible files accessed at the second or first computer, into a file structure contained at the first or second computer, respectively; at least one of integrating a desktop of the second computer on a display of the first computer and integrating a desktop of the first computer on a display of the second computer; and directly operating the second computer from the first computer or the first computer from the second computer, wherein the computer that is directly operated is selected from the group consisting of: home appliances, video equipment, audio equipment, printers, fax machines, office equipment, medical devices, vehicles, cameras, RFID equipment, laboratory equipment, manufacturing machinery, GPS equipment, and devices having one or more embedded microprocessors.

An energy controller (10) as a communication device for transmitting and receiving data by transmitting a signal for establishing transmission and reception of the data to network-connected home appliances (11a to 11c), the energy controller (10) including: a power saving control unit which determines a transmission period such that the transmission period during which the signal is transmitted is increased as a power value difference increases, which is a value obtained by subtracting the total power consumption value of a power consumption appliance from available power supply value to the power consumption appliance including the network-connected home appliances (11a to 11c); and wireless communication IF (22) for transmitting the signal containing the information indicating the transmission period to the network-connected home appliances (11a to 11c) in order to set the network-connected home appliances (11a to 11c) in an active state with a period according to the transmission period.

The disclosed invention is generally in the field of control of appliances in the home, and in their networking and connectivity also with audio systems and internet sources and the integration of these elements in a connected manner. Preferred apparatus generally employs a video projection system and one or more TV cameras. Embodiments of the invention may be used to enhance the social interaction and enjoyment of persons in the kitchen and reduce the work of food preparation. The invention may be used in many rooms of the house, and contribute to the well being of seniors and others living therein.

The present invention discloses a home network management system which can perform processing, conversion and transmission of data between a plurality of client devices and a plurality of home appliances. The home network management system resides in a home master device connected to at least one home appliance through a first network and connected to at least one client device through a second network separated from the first network, and is controlled by a central processing means of the home master device. The system includes a channel handling module for transmitting/receiving a first type of packet between the home master device and the home appliance, a transmission handling module for performing conversion between the first type of packet from the channel handling module and a first type of message from a service management module, and transmitting the converted packet and message, the service management module for performing conversion between the first type of message from the transmission handling module and a second type of message from a connection handling module, and transmitting the converted messages, and the connection handling module for performing conversion between a second type of extension message from the client device and the second type of message from the service management module.

A portable device-interoperable home network system includes a home server controls data transmission and reception of an internal network to which a plurality of home appliances are connected in a home. An image server outputs information regarding at least one image in the home to the home server. A portable device server receives the image information from the image server via the home server and transfers it to a portable electronic device. Therefore, a user can recognize a situation in the home through the portable electronic device from anywhere outside of the home, resulting in an increase in convenience of use.

Universal Video Computer Vision Input Virtual Space Mouse-Keyboard Control Panel Robot has computer system use video vision camera sensors, logical vision sensor programming as trainable computer vision seeing objects movements X, Y, Z dimensions' definitions to recognize users commands by their Hands gestures and/or enhance symbols, colors objects combination actions to virtually input data, and commands to operate computer, and machines. The robot has automatically calibrated working space into Space Mouse Zone, Space Keyboard zone, and Hand-Sign Languages Zone between user and itself. The robot automatically translate the receiving coordination users' hand gesture actions combinations on the customizable puzzle-cell positions of working space and mapping to its software mapping lists for each of the puzzle-cell position definition and calibrate these user hand and/or body gestures' virtual space actions into entering data and commands to computer meaningful computer, machine, home appliances operations.

A home network system for controlling one or more home appliances connected to a network and a method for operating the same. If an alive message or a connection termination message is normally generated from the home appliance, or if the alive message or the connection termination message is not normally transmitted to a network manager due to a transmission failure in a communication path, the network manager automatically recognizes a network connection state of the home appliance using a network search process, performs a connection termination operation according to the recognized information, and updates network information, resulting in increased reliability and user's convenience of the home network system.

A security device for a home network and a security configuration method thereof. The security device for the home network includes a user interface to send at least one request signal that includes a device register request signal to register a home appliance to the home network; a public key generator to generate a public key and a password used for security configuration of the home network; a home appliance interface to interface with the home appliance; and a controller to control the home appliance interface to transmit the public key and the password to the home appliance, and the controller to control to register the home appliance to the home network according to a service discovery protocol when the device register request signal is received from the user interface. Accordingly, the security configuration of the home network can be facilitated.

A smart controlling method applied to a smart home system for controlling a number of home appliances which may detect and act upon the approach of a user to the smart home. The smart home system learns the habits of a user from repeated inputs at repeated times by the same user to determine that a control command is a habit. When the user arrives at home or is discovered in proximity to the smart home, the smart home system calls a control command to control a relevant home appliance to execute certain operations. A smart gateway and a smart home system are also provided.

A control server, or similar central processor, manages the distribution of data (including audio and video), voice, and control signals among a plurality of devices connected via a wired and/or wireless communications network. The devices include audio/visual devices (such as, televisions, monitors, PDAs, notepads, notebooks, MP3, portable stereo, etc.) as well as household appliances (such as, lighting, ovens, alarm clocks, etc.). The control server supports video/audio serving, telephony, messaging, file sharing, internetworking, and security. A portable controller allows a user to access and control the network devices from any location within a controlled residential and/or non-residential environment, including its surrounding areas. The controllers are enhanced to support location-awareness and user-awareness functionality.