IMAGING DEVICE

• US 20100118180A1
• Filed: 11/04/2009
• Published: 05/13/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/11/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Company Limited (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Company Limited (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Inventors: Kato, Toshihiro, Watanabe, Akinobu, MATSUSHITA, Takaki
• Application Number:
  US12/611,969
• Publication Number:
  US 20100118180A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/372
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/634 Warning indications
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/651 for reducing power consumption by affecting camera operations, e.g. sleep mode, hibernation mode or power off of selective parts of the camera
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/661 Transmitting camera control signals through networks, e.g. control via the Internet

Abstract

The present invention provides an imaging device that reduces its power consumption and prevents an upload failure due to power insufficiency when it uploads movie content. The imaging device includes a power supply identification section which determines whether a drive power supply is a battery or an AC power supply, and a remaining battery power value acquisition section which, when a battery is employed as the drive power supply, acquires a current remaining battery power value P and compares it against a predetermined value P0. When the current remaining battery power value P is less than the predetermined value P0, an operation for movie content transmission by a communication module section is interrupted. In addition, an interruption information storage section stores the information about an interruption point of content to be interrupted.

Claims

1. An imaging device for shooting a subject to generate picture content and transmitting the picture content to an external device, the imaging device comprising:

an imaging unit which shoots the subject and converts the obtained subject image to a video signal;

a content storage unit which stores the video signal as picture content in encoded stream format;

a display section which playbacks and displays the picture content;

a communication module section which transmits the picture content to the external device through the Internet;

a power supply identification section which determines whether a drive power supply is a battery or an AC power supply; and

a power saving mode setup section which places the imaging device in a power saving mode to shut off the power supply to the communication module section when a battery is employed as the drive power supply.

2. An imaging device for shooting a subject to generate picture content and transmitting the picture content to an external device, the imaging device comprising:

an imaging unit which shoots the subject and converts the obtained subject image to a video signal;

a content storage unit which stores the video signal as picture content in encoded stream format;

a display section which playbacks and displays the picture content;

a communication module section which transmits the picture content to the external device through the Internet;

a power supply identification section which determines whether a drive power supply is a battery or an AC power supply; and

a remaining battery power value acquisition section which acquires a current remaining battery power value P and comparing the acquired value against a predetermined value P0 when a battery is employed as the drive power supply;

wherein, when the current remaining battery power value P is less than the predetermined value P0, an operation for the picture content transmission by the communication module section is interrupted.

3. The imaging device according to claim 2,

wherein, when the transmission operation by the communication module section is to be interrupted, the display section displays information indicating that the transmission operation will be interrupted due to the insufficiency of remaining battery power.

4. The imaging device according to claim 2, further comprising an interruption information storage section which stores the information about an interruption point of content to be interrupted when the transmission operation by the communication module section is to be interrupted.

5. The imaging device according to claim 4,

wherein, when the information about interrupted content is stored in the interruption information storage section, the display section indicates the presence of the interrupted content;

and

wherein the communication module section resumes the transmission of the interrupted content from the interruption point.

6. An imaging device for shooting a subject to generate picture content and transmitting the picture content to an external device, the imaging device comprising:

an imaging unit which shoots the subject and converts the obtained subject image to a video signal;

a content storage unit which stores the video signal as picture content in encoded stream format;

a display section which playbacks and displays the picture content;

a communication module section which transmits the picture content to the external device through the Internet;

a power supply identification section which determines whether a drive power supply is a battery or an AC power supply; and

a remaining battery power value prediction section which, when a battery is employed as the drive power supply, predicts a remaining battery power value P′

prevailing upon completion of the picture content transmission and compares the predicted remaining battery power value P′

against a predetermined value P0 before the beginning of the picture content transmission;

wherein, when the predicted remaining battery power value P′

is less than the predetermined value P0, the display section displays information indicating that the remaining battery power is not sufficient for transmission completion.

7. The imaging device according to claim 6, wherein, when the predicted remaining battery power value P′

is less than the predetermined value P0, the display section displays the predicted remaining battery power value P′ and

information prompting for connection to the AC power supply.