Data acquisition engine and system for an appliance

• US 20070240173A1
• Filed: 12/29/2006
• Published: 10/11/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/09/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Whirlpool Corporation
• Original Assignee: Whirlpool Corporation
• Inventors: McCoy, Richard, Ebrom, Matthew, Kmet, David, Glotzbach, Patrick, Carroll, Joshua, Putnam, Daniel, Whipple, Andrew
• Granted Patent: US 7,917,914 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 719/329
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2816 Controlling appliance services of a home automation network by calling their functionalities arrangements in telecontrol or telemetry systems for selectively calling a substation from a main station; in which substation desired apparatus is selected for applying a control signal thereto or for obtaining measured values therefrom H04Q9/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2825 Reporting to a device located outside the home and the home network access arrangements H04L12/2856; for remote control or remote monitoring of applications H04L67/025; telephonic communication systems adapted for combination with telemetering systems H04M11/002
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/285 Generic home appliances, e.g. refrigerators
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/26 Special purpose or proprietary protocols or architectures network applications for proprietary or special purpose networking environments H04L67/12

Abstract

A system comprising a memory heap generated dynamically by useful software and a data acquisition engine. The memory heap comprises a plurality of event structures, each including at least one each of pointers into memory external to the event structure, event operators, and arguments. The data acquisition engine is configured to look into the memory heap, evaluate event conditions as true or false based on the at least one each of the pointers, operators, and arguments, and generate a notification message when a true condition is found.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a memory heap generated dynamically by useful software, the memory heap comprising a plurality of event structures each including at least one each of pointers into memory external to the event structure, event operators, and arguments, and

a data acquisition engine configured to look into the memory heap, evaluate event conditions as true or false based on the at least one each of the pointers, operators, and arguments, and generate a notification message when a true condition is found.

2. The system according to claim 1, and comprising a memory associated with the memory heap and the memory heap is allocated in the associated memory at compile time.

3. The system according to claim 2, and comprising a software architecture that generates the event structures at run time.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein software architecture generates each of the event structures with a unique identification.

5. The system according to claim 3, wherein the software architecture resides on a communications network, which is in communication with the associated memory, and the software architecture generates messages and sends the messages over the communications network to the associated memory to form the event structures.

6. The system according to claim 5, wherein the software architecture comprises an application program interface (“

API”

) that generates the messages.

7. The system according to claim 6, wherein the communications network comprises multiple nodes, with the API residing on at least one of the nodes.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein the communications network comprises an internal communications network to an appliance.

9. The system according to claim 8, wherein the node comprises a component of the appliance on which the API resides.

10. The system according to claim 8, wherein the communications network comprises a node external to the appliance.

11. The system according to claim 1, wherein each of the event structures has a unique identification.

12. The system according to claim 10, and comprising control software configured to control a system of devices through a series of steps to perform a useful cycle of operation, with the control software generating the event structures.

13. The system according to claim 12, wherein the notification message alters the operation of the control program.

14. The system according to claim 1, and further comprising a network having a plurality of nodes, with the memory heap being associated with the network.

15. The system according to claim 14, wherein the network comprises an internal communications network for an appliance and effects the control of the operation of the appliance.

16. The system according to claim 15, wherein the network comprises a node external of the internal communications network and the notification message is sent to a node on the network.

17. The system according to claim 16, wherein the notification message is invoked on a call back function.

18. The system according to claim 14, wherein the memory heap resides on one of the nodes and the data acquisition engine resides on another of the nodes.

19. The system according to claim 18, wherein at least one of the nodes sends configuration messages over the network to create an event structure in the memory heap.

20. The system according to claim 19, wherein the configuration message enables a node to send an acknowledgement message upon the receipt of a notification message.

21. The system according to claim 1, wherein the data acquisition engine is configured such that the notification message can be selectively placed in a disabled state or an enabled state.

22. The system according to claim 21, wherein upon a change in the state of the notification message, a corresponding notification message is sent onto the network.

23. The system according to claim 1, wherein the event operators comprise at least one of:

greater than, less than, equal to, on change, deadband, and bitmast.

24. The system according to claim 1, wherein the data acquisition engine is configured to generate a notification message in response to at least one of the event conditions.

25. The system according to claim 24, wherein the data acquisition engine is configured to generate a notification message in response to multiple event conditions.

26. The system according to claim 1, wherein the data acquisition engine evaluates all event structures before generating the notification message.

27. The system according to claim 1, and further comprising an observer engine to evaluate the notification messages generated by the data acquisition engine to determine the cumulative effect of more than one event.

28. A control system comprising:

control software configured to control a system of devices through a series of steps to perform a useful cycle of operation,

a memory heap generated dynamically by the control software, the memory heap comprising a plurality of event structures each including at least one each of pointers into external memory to the event structure, event operators, and arguments associated with an event, and

a data acquisition engine adapted to look into the memory heap while the control software is running and configured to evaluate event conditions as true or false based on the at least one each of the pointers, operators, and arguments, and generate a configurable notification message when a true condition is found.

29. The control system according to claim 28, and comprising a memory associated with the memory heap and the control software allocates the memory heap in the associated memory at compile time of the control software.

30. The control system according to claim 28, wherein the control software comprises an application program interface (“

API”

) that generates the event structures.

31. The control system according to claim 30, wherein each of the event structures has a unique identification that is assigned by the control software at run time.

32. The control system according to claim 28 wherein the operation of the control software is altered in response to the configurable notification message.

33. The control system according to claim 32 wherein at least one notification message is generated in response to multiple event conditions.