System and method for harvesting of data from peripheral devices

• US 20040107188A1
• Filed: 12/03/2002
• Published: 06/03/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 12/03/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Hardcastle, Michael J.
• Granted Patent: US 7,483,897 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3013 where the computing system is an embedded system, i.e. a combination of hardware and software dedicated to perform a certain function in mobile devices, printers, automotive or aircraft systems testing or monitoring of control systems or parts thereof G05B23/02
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3055 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the status of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring if the computing system is on, off, available, not available error or fault processing without redundancy G06F11/0703; error detection or correction by redundancy in data representation G06F11/08; error detection or correction by redundancy in operation G06F11/14; error detection or correction by redundancy in hardware G06F11/16
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/125 involving control of end-device applications over a network

Abstract

In one embodiment there is disclosed a system and method for harvesting data from at least one device, by canvassing said devices and tracking which canvassed devices yielded harvested data and then repeating such canvassing and tracking until either data has been obtained from all of the devices, or a certain time has passed since the beginning of the canvassing period. In a further embodiment, when data has been obtained from all the devices or the time has passed, whichever comes first, the harvested data is sent to a central processing center.

Claims

1. A method for harvesting data from at least one device, said method comprising:

canvassing said at least one device in order to obtain data therefrom;

tracking canvassed devices that have yielded data; and

repeating said canvassing and tracking steps until the first to occur of the following;

1) data has been obtained from all of said at least one device, or

2) a certain time has passed since the beginning of said first canvassing step.

2. The method of claim 1 further including:

communicating, at the conclusion of said repeating step, to a processing center all of said obtained data.

3. The method of claim 1 further including:

establishing, prior to said first canvassing step, a window of opportunity during which it is anticipated the devices to be canvassed will be available for such canvassing;

said window of opportunity coinciding with said certain time.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein said window of opportunity is established based in part upon statistical information generated pertaining to availability of said devices.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein said devices are printers.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein said devices are printers and said data pertains, at least in part, to consumables used by said printers.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein said devices are printers.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein said devices are printers and said data pertains, at least in part, to consumables used by said printers.

9. A system for harvesting information from groups of peripheral devices, said devices arranged into at least one node, each said node having at least one device, said system comprising:

means at each said node for harvesting data during harvesting intervals from peripheral devices in communication with said node and for storing said harvested data, at least temporarily, at said node;

said harvesting means comprising;

means for keeping track of devices that are not available at a specific harvest time within said harvest interval;

means operable at intervals for reharvesting data from ones of said devices that were not available at a last harvest time within said specific harvest interval;

means for repeating said reharvesting of data until data has been harvested from all devices; and

means operable at the conclusion of each said harvest interval for ending said harvesting interval and for sending to said system all data harvested from said node during said harvest interval.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein said system further comprises:

means at said location for processing said data harvested from said nodes so as to provide services to said peripheral devices under control of said system.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein said peripheral devices are printers and wherein said provided services include keeping track of consumables at each said printer.

12. The system of claim 9 wherein said harvest interval is establish to fall within a time of high probability of the availability of said devices to have data harvested therefrom.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein said harvesting interval is derived, at least in part, by one of the following:

manual setting of start times, automatic setting of start times based on statistical analysis of past availability times, combination of start times and statistically based calculated times.

14. The system of claim 12 wherein the reharvesting times within a reharvesting interval are adjustable.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein said harvesting intervals are adjustable.

16. The system of claim 9 wherein the reharvesting times within a reharvesting interval are fixed periods.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein said harvesting intervals are adjustable.

18. A method for gathering consumable data from at least one device, said device having time constraints around which said consumable data can be gathered, said method comprising:

establishing a periodic time window for gathering said data, said time window optimized around the time constraints of said devices;

establishing within said time window a plurality of sub-time windows;

attempting, during a first one of said sub-time windows, to gather data from all of said devices; and

attempting, during each subsequent sub-time window of a periodic time window, to gather data from all devices that were not available during prior sub-time windows of said periodic time window.

19. The method of claim 18 further comprising:

transmitting said gathered data to a processing center remote from said devices when data has been gathered from all of said at least one device.

20. The method of claim 18 further comprising:

transmitting said gathered data to a processing center remote from said device at the expiration of all of said sub-time windows of a given time window.