DISTRIBUTED IN-VEHICLE RESOURCE DOWNLOADING AND STREAMING

• US 20170171272A1
• Filed: 12/11/2015
• Published: 06/15/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/11/2015
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Livio, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Myine Electronics, Inc. (Ford Motor Company)
• Inventors: Smereka, Scott, Maylone, Corey, Byrne, John, Fischer, Joel J., Grover, Joey Ray, Dickow, Justin
• Application Number:
  US14/966,939
• Publication Number:
  US 20170171272A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/60 Network streaming of media packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/765 intermediate
• 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: H04W 4/44 for communication between vehicles and infrastructures, e.g. vehicle-to-cloud [V2C] or vehicle-to-home [V2H]

Abstract

A plurality of media-sharing devices may each be in communication with one another over a local-area network of a vehicle and in communication with a server over a wide-area network. A media-sharing application may be installed to each of the media-sharing devices. The media sharing application may be programmed to cause the media-sharing devices to identify one of the media-sharing devices to be a master media-sharing device. The master media-sharing device may be programmed to identify, from the server, a portion size of a resource to be downloaded, and send download requests over the local-area network to cause each of the media-sharing devices to download a different content portion of a resource from the server over the wide-area network, each content portion of the portion size.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a plurality of media-sharing devices, each in communication with one another over a local-area network of a vehicle and in communication with a server over a wide-area network; and

a media-sharing application, installed to each of the media-sharing devices, programmed to cause the media-sharing devices to identify one of the media-sharing devices as being a master media-sharing device, the master media-sharing device programmed to

identify, from the server, a content portion size of a resource to be downloaded, and

send download requests over the local-area network to cause each of the media-sharing devices to download a different content portion of the resource from the server over the wide-area network, each content portion being of the content portion size.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein to identify one of the media-sharing devices to be the master media-sharing device includes to determine the master media-sharing device as being the one of the media-sharing devices that is paired with a computing platform of the vehicle.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein one of the plurality of media-sharing devices is a computing platform of the vehicle.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein to identify one of the media-sharing devices to be the master media-sharing device includes to determine the master media-sharing device as being the computing platform of the vehicle.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the master media-sharing device is further programmed to:

create a media device list of the media-sharing devices; and

select the different content portion of the resource to be downloaded by each of the media-sharing devices on the media device list.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the master media-sharing device is further programmed to:

periodically broadcast requests querying for media-sharing devices; and

update the media device list to at least one of add a newly-responding media-sharing device to the media device list or remove a media-sharing device no longer responding to the requests from the media device list.

7. A method comprising:

identifying a portion size of a resource based on a total size of the resource and a count of media-sharing devices communicating with one another over a local-area network of a vehicle and with a server over a wide-area network;

sending download requests over the local-area network causing the media-sharing devices to download portions of the resource over the wide-area network; and

assembling the resource from the portions.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

receiving a request for the resource; and

providing the resource, as assembled, responsive to the request.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising requesting the portion size from the server.

10. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

creating a list of the media-sharing devices; and

assigning the portions of the resource to be downloaded by each of the media-sharing devices on the media device list.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

periodically broadcasting requests querying for media-sharing devices; and

updating a media device list to at least one of add a newly-responding media-sharing device to the media device list or remove a media-sharing device from the media device list that is no longer responding to the requests.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

assigning a first portion of the resource to be downloaded by one of the media-sharing devices; and

assigning a second portion of the resource to be downloaded by the one of the media-sharing devices responsive to receiving a notification from the one of the media-sharing devices that the first portion of the resource is downloaded.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising assigning the portions of the resource to be downloaded by each of the media-sharing devices on the media device list to spread data usage of the wide-area network across the media-sharing devices.

14. The method of claim 7, further comprising identifying one of the media-sharing devices to be a master media-sharing device sending the download requests by determining the master media-sharing device to be the one of the media-sharing devices that is paired with a computing platform of the vehicle.

15. The method of claim 7, wherein one of the media-sharing devices is a computing platform of the vehicle.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising identifying one of the media-sharing devices to be a master media-sharing device by determining the master media-sharing device to be the computing platform of the vehicle.

17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying instructions that, when executed by a processor of a media-sharing device, are configured to cause the media-sharing device to:

determine that the media-sharing device is a master media-sharing device;

create a list of the media-sharing devices communicating with the media-sharing device over a local-area network of a vehicle and with a server over a wide-area network;

receive a request for a resource to be downloaded from the server over the wide-area network; and

assign portions of the resource to be downloaded to each of the media-sharing devices on the list.

18. The medium of claim 17, further embodying instructions to cause the media-sharing device to determine either:

that the media-sharing device is the master media-sharing device responsive to identifying the media-sharing device as being a computing platform of the vehicle, or that the media-sharing device is the master media-sharing device responsive to identifying the media-sharing devices as being paired with the computing platform of the vehicle.

19. The medium of claim 17, wherein the resource is an instance of media content hosted by the server.

20. The medium of claim 17, further embodying instructions to cause the media-sharing device to assemble the resource from the portions.