Apparatus for monitoring the status of multiple laundry appliances
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A system for monitoring the operating status of a group of laundry appliances in a laundry room comprising:
- multiple laundry appliances, each having a status signal generating mechanism within, said signal indicating the status of the appliance;
a gang monitor connected to each of the laundry appliances, said gang monitor constructed to receive and process the appliance status signals and generate a busy/idle status signal representative thereof;
a server for communicating with said gang monitor to receive the busy/idle status signal therefrom, said server constructed to process, compile and store a status record for each appliance;
a user interface to provide access by a user to the server;
a first communication link connecting the server and said gang monitor to allow the gang monitor to send status signals to said server; and
a second communication link connecting the user interface to the server to allow access by said user to the server.
14 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system for monitoring the status of laundry appliances in a laundry taps into the busy/idle signal of the appliances to obtain status information. By tapping into the busy/idle signal through connections to the individual appliances, the monitoring system can generate a busy/idle status signal. These signals are communicated to laundry server through a local area network or internet link to allow compilation and processing of the data. Local or remote users gain access to the laundry server data through the LAN or Internet link.
-
Citations
25 Claims
-
1. A system for monitoring the operating status of a group of laundry appliances in a laundry room comprising:
-
multiple laundry appliances, each having a status signal generating mechanism within, said signal indicating the status of the appliance;
a gang monitor connected to each of the laundry appliances, said gang monitor constructed to receive and process the appliance status signals and generate a busy/idle status signal representative thereof;
a server for communicating with said gang monitor to receive the busy/idle status signal therefrom, said server constructed to process, compile and store a status record for each appliance;
a user interface to provide access by a user to the server;
a first communication link connecting the server and said gang monitor to allow the gang monitor to send status signals to said server; and
a second communication link connecting the user interface to the server to allow access by said user to the server. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
-
Specification