Locating items
First Claim
1. A method of locating a missing item, the item being capable of communicating its presence to a piconet telecommunications device, comprising:
- (i) there being a plurality of piconet devices capable of forming a short range piconet;
(ii) having the piconet devices establish which other piconet devices are members of the piconet to which they belong at a particular point in time, and having the piconet devices create an activity log correlating at least time and the identity of which piconet devices were in communication at that point in time;
(iii) establishing whether the missing item is present in the current piconet of said piconet device and/or reviewing the activity log to establish whether a record exists of a historic piconet to which both the missing item and a contactable other piconet device belonged at the time that the historic piconet existed.
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A mobile telecommunications device (10, 12, 14, 16) has both short range, piconet, telecommunications ability and long range cellular telecommunications ability. Mobile items of personal property, eg a pair of glasses (18) can be lost by an individual. The telecommunications devices (10, 12, 14, 16) keep an activity log of the times of existence and members of piconets of which they have been members. If a lost item (18) is not in the present piconet (26) of a user'"'"'s device (10) it can backtrack through its activity log to find the last piconet for which both it and the missing item (18) were members, and can identify from the activity log what other devices (12, 14, 16) were present in that particular piconet. The device (10) can then contact the devices (12, 14, 16) and determine whether the missing item 18 is presently part of their piconet, and hence can locate the missing item if it is present in one of their piconets. The device may also geostamp its activity records and/or be aware of its geographical position.
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Citations
51 Claims
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1. A method of locating a missing item, the item being capable of communicating its presence to a piconet telecommunications device, comprising:
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(i) there being a plurality of piconet devices capable of forming a short range piconet;
(ii) having the piconet devices establish which other piconet devices are members of the piconet to which they belong at a particular point in time, and having the piconet devices create an activity log correlating at least time and the identity of which piconet devices were in communication at that point in time;
(iii) establishing whether the missing item is present in the current piconet of said piconet device and/or reviewing the activity log to establish whether a record exists of a historic piconet to which both the missing item and a contactable other piconet device belonged at the time that the historic piconet existed. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 32, 47, 48, 49, 51)
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15. A method of locating a missing item, the item being capable of communicating its presence to a piconet telecommunications device, comprising;
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(i) there being a plurality of piconet devices capable of forming a short range piconet and forming a piconet with those devices;
(ii) having the piconet devices establish which other piconet devices are members of the piconet to which they belong at a particular point in time and having the piconet devices create an activity log correlating at least time and the identity of which piconet devices were in communication at that point in time;
(iii) establishing whether the missing item is present in the current piconet of a said piconet device and/or reviewing the activity log to establish whether a record exists of a historic piconet to which both the missing item and a contactable other piconet device belonged at the time that the historic piconet existed;
(iv) establishing whether there is a known location for the historic piconet which most recently had as a member the missing item. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19)
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20. A piconet telecommunications device having a piconet receiver capable of receiving information about members of a piconet to which the device temporarily belongs and a controller;
- wherein the controller is arranged in use to capture a piconet activity log when the device comes within piconet range of other piconet devices and to build up a log of which other devices were piconet members with the device and at what time that piconet existed, and also which of those devices are dual mode devices having both piconet capabilities and having long range telecommunication abilities, and to establish their long range telecommunication addresses; and
in which the controller is capable of receiving a request to search for a missing item of known identity and upon such request is adapted to screen the activity log to identify historic piconets which contained the missing item and a dual mode device, and wherein the controller is adapted upon identifying such a dual mode device to contact it via long range telecommunications and to establish whether the missing item is in the current piconet of the dual mode device. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 39, 42, 43)
- wherein the controller is arranged in use to capture a piconet activity log when the device comes within piconet range of other piconet devices and to build up a log of which other devices were piconet members with the device and at what time that piconet existed, and also which of those devices are dual mode devices having both piconet capabilities and having long range telecommunication abilities, and to establish their long range telecommunication addresses; and
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21. A piconet telecommunications device having a piconet receiver capable of receiving information about members of a piconet to which the device temporarily belongs and a controller;
- wherein the controller is arranged in use to capture a piconet activity log when the device comes within piconet range of other piconet devices, the piconet activity log comprising a record of which other devices were piconet members with the device and at what time that piconet existed and a positional location for the piconet at that time; and
in which the controller is capable of receiving a request to search for a missing item of known identity and upon such request is adapted to screen the activity log to identify historic piconets known to the device to have contained the missing item and the positional location of the historic piconet which last contained the missing item, the device being adapted to communicate the last, piconet-known to the device, location of the missing item to the user.
- wherein the controller is arranged in use to capture a piconet activity log when the device comes within piconet range of other piconet devices, the piconet activity log comprising a record of which other devices were piconet members with the device and at what time that piconet existed and a positional location for the piconet at that time; and
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31. A piconet network comprising a plurality of piconet devices in communication, the piconet devices having the functional capability of automatically exchanging with other devices in a piconet, without human intervention, information as to their identity, and of recording the identity of members of the piconet in an activity log or in respective piconet activity logs associated with each piconet device, the activity log(s) including the members of the piconet and a time at which the particular piconet with those particular members existed.
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33. A piconet telecommunications device having a piconet receiver capable of receiving information about members of piconets to which the device temporarily belongs, and a controller;
- wherein the controller is arranged in use to create automatically, without user intervention, when the device comes within piconet range of a piconet apparatus and communicates with said piconet apparatus, a piconet activity log which records the identity of the members of the piconet to which the device belongs.
- View Dependent Claims (34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41)
- 44. A method of tracking piconet-capable articles in the physical environment of a piconet device comprising having the device automatically create without user input a piconet activity log of the identity of piconet capable articles which have formed an ad-hoc piconet with said device.
Specification