Self-healing charging device

• US 10,031,826 B2
• Filed: 11/14/2014
• Issued: 07/24/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 11/14/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: T-Mobile USA, Inc. (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Original Assignee: T-Mobile USA, Inc. (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Inventors: Herb, Daniel E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Tso, Edward
• Assistant Examiner(s): PIGGUSH, AARON C
• Application Number:
  US14/542,330
• Publication Number:
  US 20160140010A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,348 Days
• Field of Search: 320107, 320114, 320134, 702185, 702186
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/008 Reliability or availability analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0742 in a data processing system embedded in a mobile device, e.g. mobile phones, handheld devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3006 where the computing system is distributed, e.g. networked systems, clusters, multiprocessor systems multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46; allocation of resources G06F9/50
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3065 Monitoring arrangements determined by the means or processing involved in reporting the monitored data error or fault reporting or logging G06F11/0766
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3433 for load management allocation of a server based on load conditions G06F9/505; load rebalancing G06F9/5083; redistributing the load in a network by a load balancer H04L67/1029
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3447 Performance evaluation by modeling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3466 Performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H01M 10/4257 Smart batteries, e.g. electronic circuits inside the housing of the cells or batteries
• CPC Class Codes: H02J 7/00 Circuit arrangements for charging or depolarising batteries or for supplying loads from batteries
• CPC Class Codes: H02J 7/00032 characterised by data exchange
• CPC Class Codes: H02J 7/007 Regulation of charging or discharging current or voltage
• CPC Class Codes: Y02E 60/10 Energy storage using batteries

Abstract

Self-healing charging devices and techniques for identifying and/or troubleshooting causes of performance degradation in user devices are described. The self-healing charging devices described herein can leverage performance logs associated with user devices to identify problems on the user devices while the user devices are charging. Additionally or alternatively, the self-healing charging devices can leverage predictive models learned from a collection of data derived from a plurality of users associated with a network to identify usage and/or performance patterns for predicting issues that can arise based on usage patterns of the user of the user device. In some examples, the self-healing charging devices can be communicatively coupled to at least one network for offloading some of the processing. The self-healing charging devices can enable users to easily identify issues causing and/or leading to performance degradation on their user devices and remedy and/or prevent problems that cause the performance degradation.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

charging, by a charging component of a charging device, a user device connected to the charging device;

while charging the user device;

receiving, by the charging device, data at the charging device from the user device;

analyzing, by the charging device, the data to identify one or more performance issues associated with current and/or predicted performance degradation in the user device;

based at least in part on identifying the one or more performance issues, providing, by the charging device, a recommendation to the user device that identifies one or more recommended actions that will remedy and/or prevent the performance degradation in the user device; and

causing, by the charging device, display of the recommendation on a display screen of the user device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data received from the user device comprises at least one of:

logs representative of activities and/or errors associated with the user device;

or

user device network data representative of network connections between the user device and a network communicatively coupled to a plurality of user devices.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving, at the charging device, network data from at least one network communicatively coupled to a plurality of user devices, the plurality of user devices including the user device.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the network data comprises demographic data and usage pattern data associated with users of the plurality of user devices.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the data comprises comparing, by the charging device, the data received from the user device against standard data for the user device to identify the one or more one or more performance issues.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein causing display of the recommendation comprises causing display of one or more user-selectable options associated with potential performance of the one or more recommended actions by the user device, and wherein the recommendation comprises instructions executable by the user device to perform zero or more of the one or more recommended actions based on user input to the user device selecting one of the user-selectable options.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the options comprise:

a first option to perform all of the recommended actions;

a second option to not perform any of the recommended actions; and

a third option to perform individual ones of the recommended actions.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising sending, from the charging device, the data from the user device to at least one network communicatively coupled to a plurality of user devices, the at least one network analyzing the data from the user device based at least in part on predictive models learned from network data collected by the at least one network.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising receiving, at the charging device from the network, identification of one or more network-identified performance issues determined by the network based at least in part on applying the predictive models to the data from the user device,

wherein the recommended actions identified in the recommendation include actions that will remedy and/or prevent the network-identified performance issues.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving, by the charging device from a network communicatively coupled to a plurality of user devices, a predictive model trained on data received by the network from the plurality of user devices,

wherein analyzing the data comprises using, by the charging device, the predictive model on the data received from the user device to identify at least one of the one or more performance issues that is associated with predicted performance degradation.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein charging the user device comprises delivering power from the charging component to the user device through a wired connection.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein charging the user device comprises delivering power from the charging component to the user device through a wireless connection.

13. A charging device comprising:

one or more processors;

a charging component that charges a user device when the user device is connected to the charging device; and

a computer-readable media that includes a plurality of computer-executable components, the plurality of computer-executable components comprising;

a communicating module configured to, while the charging component charges the user device;

receive, from the user device, data including logs representative of activities and/or errors associated with the user device;

transmit, to the user device, a recommendation indicating one or more recommended actions that will remedy and/or prevent current and/or predicted performance degradation in the user device; and

cause the user device to display the recommendation on a display of the user device;

an analyzing module configured to, while the charging component charges the user device, analyze the data to identify one or more performance issues associated with the current and/or predicted performance degradation in the user device; and

a recommending module configured to, while the charging component charges the user device, generate the recommendation based on the identification of the one or more performance issues by the analysis module and transmit the recommendation to the user device through the communicating module.

14. The charging device of claim 13, wherein the data further comprises:

user data received from the user device, the user data comprising demographic data and usage patterns associated with a user of the user device;

user device network data from the user device, the user device network data comprising network connections between the user device and a network associated with a plurality of user devices, the plurality of user devices including the user device; and

network data received from the network, wherein the network data comprises demographic data and usage pattern data associated with users of the plurality of user devices.

15. The charging device of claim 14, wherein the analyzing module analyzes the data using a predictive model trained on the network data to identify at least one of the one or more performance issues that is associated with predicted performance degradation.

16. The charging device of claim 13, wherein the recommending module determines the recommendations based at least in part on processing at least some of the data by the analyzing module.

17. The charging device of claim 13, wherein the analyzing module analyzes the data by comparing the data against standard data for the user device.

18. The charging device of claim 13, wherein the charging component is a wired charger that delivers power to the user device through a wired connection to the user device.

19. The charging device of claim 13, wherein the charging component is a wireless charger that delivers power to the user device through a wireless connection to the user device.