Efficient collection of information from vending machines

• US 20030050841A1
• Filed: 08/28/2001
• Published: 03/13/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 08/28/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vending Management Services Limited
• Original Assignee: Vending Management Services Limited
• Inventors: Preston, Kevin W., OʼNeill, Harley F., Bauer, Gregory P.
• Granted Patent: US 6,754,558 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/16
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/283 Multi-dimensional databases or data warehouses, e.g. MOLAP or ROLAP
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/20 Point-of-sale [POS] network systems
• CPC Class Codes: G07F 5/18 specially adapted for controlling several coin-freed apparatus from one place
• CPC Class Codes: G07F 9/002 Vending machines being part of a centrally controlled network of vending machines
• CPC Class Codes: G07F 9/026 for alarm, monitoring and auditing in vending machines or means for indication, e.g. when empty

Abstract

The present invention provides an efficient system for providing vending information from vending machines to a central processing system. Difference indicia representing changes in vending information from a previous update is sent to the central processing system from a vending machine. The difference indicia provides sufficient information for the central processing system to update the data kept at the central processing system to reflect new vending information. Preferably, reference vending data is kept at the vending machine and at the central processing system. New vending data is compared with the reference vending data to identify differences between the new vending data and the reference vending data. These differences are used to generate the difference indicia sent to the central processing system. Upon receipt by the central processing system, the difference indicia is used to modify the reference vending data stored at the central processing system to reflect the new vending data.

Claims

1. A vending machine, comprising:

a) a control system adapted to;

i) determine new vending data for the vending machine, the new vending data relative to reference vending data kept at a central processing system for the vending machine; and

ii) generate difference indicia capable of instructing the central processing system to modify the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data; and

b) communication electronics associated with said control system and adapted to communicate the difference indicia to the central processing system wherein the reference data at the central processing system is modified using the difference indicia to reflect the new vending data.

2. The vending machine of claim 1, wherein said control system is further adapted to store the reference vending data and compare the new vending data with the reference vending data to generate the difference indicia.

3. The vending machine of claim 2, wherein said control system is further adapted to determine differences between the reference vending data and the new vending data and generate the difference indicia reflecting only the differences between the reference vending data and the new vending data.

4. The vending machine of claim 3, wherein the difference indicia only includes information necessary to modify the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

5. The vending machine of claim 1, wherein the reference vending data and the new vending data include records and data for the records and said control system is further adapted to compare the corresponding records for the reference vending data and the new vending data to identify records to insert into and records to delete from the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

6. The vending machine of claim 5, wherein said control system is further adapted to compare the corresponding records for the reference vending data and the new vending data to identify records to modify in the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

7. The vending machine of claim 1, wherein said control system is adapted to generate the difference indicia to include a line number for an affected record, a type for the affected record, and data, if necessary, for the affected record.

8. The vending machine of claim 1, wherein said control system is further adapted to store the reference vending data and update the reference vending data with the new vending data after generating the difference indicia.

9. The vending machine of claim 1, wherein said control system is further adapted to run a differencing algorithm on the reference vending data and the new vending data to generate the difference indicia, the differencing algorithm corresponding to a reconstruction algorithm run by the central processing system on the difference indicia and the reference vending data to update the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

10. The vending machine of claim 1, wherein said control system is further adapted to tokenize portions of data in the difference indicia such that the central processing system recovers data from the portions of data tokenized by the control system.

11. The vending machine of claim 1, wherein said control system is further adapted to compress data representing the difference indicia for transmission to the central processing system.

12. The vending machine of claim 1, further comprising a vending machine controller and a vending interface unit housing said control system such that the vending machine interface receives vending information from the vending machine controller to determine the new vending data.

13. A vending machine interface configured to interact with a vending machine controller, said vending machine interface comprising:

a) a control system adapted to;

i) gather new vending data for a vending machine from the vending machine controller, the new vending data relative to reference vending data kept at a central processing system for the vending machine; and

ii) generate difference indicia capable of instructing the central processing system to modify the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data; and

b) communication electronics associated with said control system and adapted to communicate the difference indicia to the central processing system wherein the reference data at the central processing system is modified using the difference indicia to reflect the new vending data.

14. A vending machine data processing system, comprising:

a) a control system adapted to process difference indicia providing instructions to modify reference vending data to reflect new vending data for a vending machine; and

b) communication electronics associated with said control system and adapted to receive the difference indicia from the vending machine.

15. A computer readable medium comprising software for instructing a control system to:

a) determine new vending data for a vending machine, the new vending data relative to reference vending data kept at a central processing system for the vending machine;

b) generate difference indicia capable of instructing the central processing system to modify the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data; and

c) effect communications of the difference indicia to the central processing system wherein the reference data at the central processing system is modified using the difference indicia to reflect the new vending data.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising instructions to store the reference vending data and compare the new vending data with the reference vending data to generate the difference indicia.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 16, further comprising instructions to determine differences between the reference vending data and the new vending data and generate the difference indicia reflecting only the differences between the reference vending data and the new vending data.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 17, wherein the difference indicia only includes information necessary to modify the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the reference vending data and the new vending data include records and data for the records and further comprising instructions to compare the corresponding records for the reference vending data and the new vending data to identify records to insert into and records to delete from the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 19, further comprising instructions to compare the corresponding records for the reference vending data and the new vending data to identify records to modify in the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

21. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising instructions to generate the difference indicia to include a line number for an affected record, a type for the affected record, and data, if necessary, for the affected record.

22. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising instructions to store the reference vending data and update the reference vending data with the new vending data after generating the difference indicia.

23. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising instructions to run a differencing algorithm on the reference vending data and the new vending data to generate the difference indicia, the differencing algorithm corresponding to a reconstruction algorithm run by the central processing system on the difference indicia and the reference vending data to update the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

24. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising instructions to tokenize portions of data in the difference indicia such that the central processing system recovers data from the portions of data tokenized by the control system.

25. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising instructions to compress data representing the difference indicia for transmission to the central processing system.

26. A computer readable medium, comprising software for instructing a control system to:

a) process difference indicia providing instructions to modify reference vending data to reflect new vending data for a vending machine; and

b) effect reception of the difference indicia from the vending machine.

27. A method, comprising:

a) determining new vending data for a vending machine, the new vending data relative to reference vending data kept at a central processing system for the vending machine; and

b) generating difference indicia capable of instructing the central processing system to modify the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data; and

c) communicating the difference indicia to the central processing system wherein the reference data at the central processing system is modified to reflect the new vending data using the difference indicia.

28. The method of claim 27, further comprising:

a) storing the reference vending data; and

b) comparing the new vending data with the reference vending data to generate the difference indicia.

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising determining differences between the reference vending data and the new vending data and generating the difference indicia reflecting only the differences between the reference vending data and the new vending data.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein the difference indicia only includes information necessary to modify the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

31. The method of claim 27, wherein the reference vending data and the new vending data include records and data for the records and further comprising comparing the corresponding records for the reference vending data and the new vending data to identify records to insert into and records to delete from the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

32. The method of claim 31, further comprising comparing the corresponding records for the reference vending data and the new vending data to identify records to modify in the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

33. The method of claim 27, further comprising generating the difference indicia to include a line number for an affected record, a type for the affected record, and data, if necessary, for the affected record.

34. The method of claim 27, further comprising storing the reference vending data and updating the reference vending data with the new vending data after generating the difference indicia.

35. The method of claim 27, further comprising running a differencing algorithm on the reference vending data and the new vending data to generate the difference indicia, the differencing algorithm corresponding to a reconstruction algorithm run by the central processing system on the difference indicia and the reference vending data to update the reference vending data to reflect the new vending data.

36. The method of claim 27, further comprising tokenizing portions of data in the difference indicia such that the central processing system recovers data from the portions of data tokenized by the control system.

37. The method of claim 27, further comprising compressing data representing the difference indicia for transmission to the central processing system.