APPLIANCE WITH THEME SELECTION

• US 20090327931A1
• Filed: 09/10/2009
• Published: 12/31/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/03/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Whirlpool Corporation
• Original Assignee: Whirlpool Corporation
• Inventors: OOSTERWAL, ERIK P., BONUSO, JENNIFER L., SATANEK, BRANDON L., RADFORD, BRIAN N., MCCOY, RICHARD A., GLOTZBACH, MARK E.
• Granted Patent: US 8,484,571 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/763
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/263 Generation of test inputs, e.g. test vectors, patterns or sequences ; with adaptation of the tested hardware for testability with external testers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/10 Requirements analysis; Specification techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/36 Software reuse
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/38 for implementing user interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2814 Exchanging control software or macros for controlling appliance services in a home automation network arrangements for maintenance or administration involving configuration of the network and network elements H04L41/08
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/285 Generic home appliances, e.g. refrigerators
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/125 involving control of end-device applications over a network
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 715/965 for process control and configuration

Abstract

An appliance includes one or more control boards having control software to control a cycle of operation of the appliance, a graphical user interface in communication with the control boards for allowing a user to observe and interact with the appliance regarding the cycle of operation, and a software framework configured to run in a processor having memory in communication with the graphical user interface. The software framework has theme definitions and access to builder content containing information with which it associates a theme definition with one or more resources. The software framework dynamically renders the graphical user interface at runtime based on the resources in response to selection of a theme so that a user can cause the control board to control the cycle of operation via the selected theme in the graphical user interface.

Claims

1. An appliance configured to perform a cycle of operation on a physical article comprising:

at least one control board having control software to control the cycle of operation,

a graphical user interface in communication with the at least one control board for allowing a user to observe and interact with the appliance regarding the cycle of operation, a software framework configured to run in a processor having memory in communication with the graphical user interface and having theme definitions and access to builder content containing information with which the software framework associates a theme definition with at least one resource,

wherein the software framework dynamically renders the graphical user interface at runtime based on the at least one resource in response to selection of a theme so that a user can cause the control board to control the cycle of operation via the selected theme in the graphical user interface.

2. The appliance of claim 1 wherein the graphical user interface further comprises at least one instance of a user interface control and wherein the builder content further contains information with which the software framework creates the at least one instance of user interface control.

3. The appliance of claim 2 wherein the at least one instance comprises at least one property and the builder content further comprises information from which the software framework associates the at least one property with the at least one resource to affect visualization of the at least one instance of a user interface control in the graphical user interface in response to selection of the theme.

4. The appliance of claim 2 wherein the software framework lazy loads the at least one resource contemporaneously with the activation of a user interface control.

5. The appliance of claim 1 wherein the software framework further comprises a theme manager configured to change the at least one associated resource to at least one different resource in response to the selection of a different theme.

6. The appliance of claim 5 wherein the software framework is further configured to manage the memory of the processor in response to the selection of the theme.

7. The appliance of claim 6 wherein the management of the memory includes at least one of overwriting memory in use with the at least one different resource, allocating memory associated with the at least one resource, and deallocating memory associated with the at least one resource.

8. The appliance of claim 1 further comprising at least one sensor of information with the sensor in communication with the software framework, and binding data associating the information with the theme wherein the theme manager changes the theme in response to the sensing of the information from the at least one sensor so that the rendering of the graphical user interface changes in response to the sensing of the information at runtime.

9. The appliance of claim 8 wherein the information is an identifier.

10. The appliance of claim 9 wherein the information is an identifier of at least one of a person, a consumable, an article, and a consumable holder.

11. The appliance of claim 8 wherein the at least one sensor is a virtual sensor.

12. The appliance of claim 11 wherein the at least one sensor is one of a time observer and a date observer.

13. The appliance of claim 12 wherein rendering is in response to the sensing of one of the time of day and a day of year.

14. An appliance of claim 8 wherein the at least one sensor is configured to sense one of a consumable, an article, and a person.

15. An appliance of claim 8 wherein the sensor is a software agent configured to sense appliance control information.

16. The appliance of claim 15 wherein the appliance control information includes at least one of information associated with the cycle of operation, a selected cycle of operation, cycle modifiers or selections thereof, cycle time, delay time, cycle duration, temperature, speed, energy usage, resource usage, water usage, waste heat capture, resource recycling, waste recycling, and at least one cycle outcome.

17. The appliance of claim 11 wherein the virtual sensor senses at least one of the weather, significant days, birthdays, anniversaries, and financial market conditions and wherein the graphical user interface displays information signifying the at least one of the weather, significant days, birthdays, anniversaries, and financial market conditions in reponse to one of the selected them and the information.

18. The appliance of claim 11 wherein the virtual sensor is in communication with a social network.

19. The appliance of claim 18 wherein the rendering of the user interface changes in response to the communication.

20. The appliance of claim 11 wherein the virtual sensor is in communication with a remote data source connected via a network.

21. The appliance of claim 11 wherein the virtual sensor is in communications with a calendar application wherein data from the calendar application is acquired from the virtual sensor to affect the rendering.

22. An appliance configured to perform a cycle of operation on a physical article comprising:

a dynamic user interface for allowing a user to at least one of initiate and observe the cycle,

at least two theme definitions wherein each theme definition comprises an identifier,

at least one control board in communication with the user interface having at least one processor and memory,

a software framework in the memory having access to a content provider for acquiring a dataset from at least one source of data, and further having at least one binding object and at least one user interface control object wherein the at least one binding object and the at least one user interface control object are directly or indirectly related,

at least one source of information about a dataset having data wherein the at least one binding object and the at least one source of information about a dataset are directly or indirectly related in the memory, and

a memory location to store a selected theme identifier wherein the software framework can change the relationship between the at least one binding object and the at least one source of information in response to a runtime change to the value of the memory location that stores the theme identifier resulting in a graphical transformation of the user interface wherein the relationships with the at least one binding object enable the transformation to be made at runtime.