Home Appliance Sound Signal Diagnostic System
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing home appliance diagnostic systems face challenges in accurately diagnosing faults and communicating appliance states to service centers, leading to increased repair time and costs due to the need for continuous modem connections and susceptibility to signal interference and data loss during sound signal transmission.
Innovation Solution
A diagnostic system that converts product information into a sound signal for home appliances, allowing for fault diagnosis by extracting error codes and determining the cause of issues such as door errors, enabling rapid and accurate after-sales service through a communication network.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If fault information is output as simple code values, then the home appliance can notify users of faults, but users cannot accurately understand or communicate the fault state to service centers
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the traditional visual display mechanism with an acoustic output mechanism. The controller converts fault information into sound signals that are emitted through the home appliance's speaker, allowing users to perceive fault details through auditory feedback rather than reading text codes. This substitution enables more intuitive user understanding while maintaining comprehensive fault communication.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of information presentation from visual text codes to acoustic waveforms. By transforming fault information into sound signals with varying frequencies and patterns, the system makes fault states more perceivable and understandable for users, thereby reducing information loss during communication with service centers.
2Adaptability or versatility
If a modem is continuously connected to transmit fault information over telephone network, then remote diagnosis is enabled, but spatial restriction is imposed on appliance installation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the continuous modem connection requirement from the remote diagnosis system. Instead of requiring a permanently installed modem, the system uses the home appliance's existing speaker to emit sound signals that can be captured by a mobile phone's microphone. This extraction eliminates the need for continuous physical connection while maintaining remote diagnosis capability, thereby removing spatial installation restrictions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a mobile phone as an intermediary device between the home appliance and the service center. The mobile phone captures sound signals from the appliance's speaker and transmits them via wireless communication, eliminating the need for direct modem connection. This intermediary approach enables remote diagnosis without imposing spatial restrictions on appliance installation.
3Loss of information
If fault information is converted to sound signals for telephone transmission, then data can be transmitted over existing telephone network, but signal interference and data loss occur during transmission
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by having the home appliance's controller prepare and emit complete fault information as sound signals before transmission. The controller ensures that all necessary fault data is encoded into the sound signals in advance, so that when the mobile phone captures and transmits the signals, the complete information is already prepared, reducing the risk of data loss during transmission.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements feedback by using the mobile phone's microphone to capture the sound signals and transmit them back to the service center for analysis. The system relies on the feedback loop where the service center receives the captured sound signals, processes the fault information, and can verify transmission accuracy, thereby reducing the impact of signal interference and data loss.
4Productivity
If service technicians visit users' homes without prior accurate fault information, then they can perform physical inspection, but repair time and costs increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by enabling the home appliance to automatically transmit complete fault information to the service center before the service technician arrives. The controller emits sound signals containing all necessary diagnostic data, which the mobile phone captures and transmits in advance. This preliminary transmission allows the service technician to review the fault information before visiting the user's home, significantly reducing on-site diagnosis time and improving repair efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements self-service by allowing the home appliance to autonomously transmit its own fault information to the service center without requiring manual intervention from the user or service technician. The appliance's controller automatically encodes and emits the fault data as sound signals, enabling the system to serve itself in communicating its status, thereby reducing the time and costs associated with manual inspection and diagnosis.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Facilitates accurate fault diagnosis and rapid after-sales service by enabling the transmission of detailed product information as sound signals over communication networks, reducing repair time and costs by providing clear diagnostic results to service technicians.
Implementation Method 1
a sound output device for outputting a sound signal corresponding to the product information
Implementation Method 2
transmitting the sound signal to a service center over a telephone network
Data Source
AI summary
A diagnostic system and method for a home appliance is provided. When the home appliance outputs product information as a sound signal, a service center remotely performs fault diagnosis of the home appliance by receiving the sound signal, detecting the product information from the sound signal, checking the state of the home appliance using diagnostic data included in the product information to determine whether the home appliance is out of order, determining, when a door error has occurred, a cause of the door error, and deriving a solution to the door error. Upon deriving a diagnosis result through the fault diagnosis of the home appliance, the service center immediately notifies the user of the diagnosis result and may dispatch a service technician or may provide the user with a solution to allow the user to easily fix the fault.