IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS

• US 20200133593A1
• Filed: 10/16/2019
• Published: 04/30/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: OKI Electric Industry Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Oki Data Corporation (OKI Electric Industry Company Limited)
• Inventors: WATANABE, Keisuke, YAJI, Masao, MITANI, Syuhei
• Granted Patent: US 10,871,927 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3284 Power saving in printer
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1221 with regard to power consumption
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1229 Printer resources management or printer maintenance, e.g. device status, power levels
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1236 Connection management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1285 Remote printer device, e.g. being remote from client or server
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1293 Printer information exchange with computer
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1298 Printer language recognition, e.g. programme control language, page description language
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00885 Power supply means, e.g. arrangements for the control of power supply to the apparatus or components thereof
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00904 Arrangements for supplying power to different circuits or for supplying power at different levels H04N1/00896 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

An image forming apparatus includes a power supply part that supplies electronic power in two different power modes (first and second modes), a communication part that includes a transmitting and receiving part that receives a network packet in the both modes, and a determination part that stores filter information and determines whether or not the network packet matches one of filter settings, a determination control part that performs a rewrite operation to repeatedly rewrite the filter information while running in the second mode, a power supply control part that transits the power mode of the power supply part from the second mode to the first mode based on a determination result of the determination part, a packet transmitting and receiving part that receives the network packet supplied from the transmitting and receiving part in the first mode and stops an operation of itself in the second mode, and an image forming part stops an operation of itself in the second mode.

Claims

1. An image forming apparatus, comprising:

a power supply part that supplies electronic power in a power mode that is chosen from two different power modes that are a first mode and a second mode wherein a power consumption in the second mode is smaller than a power consumption in the first mode,

a communication part that includes;

a transmitting and receiving part that receives a network packet in both the first mode and the second mode; and

a determination part that

stores filter information containing a plurality of filter settings and determines whether or not the network packet, which is received by the transmitting and receiving part in the second mode, matches one of the plurality of filter settings, creating a determination result;

a determination control part that performs a rewrite operation to repeatedly rewrite the filter information in the determination part while running in the second mode;

a power supply control part that transits the power mode of the power supply part from the second mode to the first mode based on the determination result of the determination part;

a packet transmitting and receiving part that

receives the network packet supplied from the transmitting and receiving part in the first mode and

stops an operation of itself in the second mode; and

an image forming part that

forms an image on a recording medium based on the network packet received by the packet transmitting and receiving part in the first mode and

stops an operation of itself in the second mode.

2. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein

the determination control part performs the rewrite operation every time when a predetermined time period has elapsed.

3. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein

the filter information is composed with at least two filter information sets that are a first filter information set and a second filter information set,

the first filter information set contains filter settings that are different from filter settings contained in the second filter information set,

the determination control part performs the rewrite operation by alternatively using one of the first and second filter information sets.

4. The image forming apparatus according to claim 2, wherein

the packet transmitting and receiving part, in the first mode, detects a time interval of reception times of the network packet when the network packet is retransmitted, and

the determination control part sets a length of the predetermined time period based on the time interval.

5. The image forming apparatus according to claim 4, wherein

the length of the predetermined time period is about the same as the time interval.

6. The image forming apparatus according to claim 4, wherein

the length of the predetermined time period is about twice as large as the time interval.

7. The image forming apparatus according to claim 4, wherein

the packet transmitting and receiving part, in the first mode, further detects a retransmission number indicating how many times the network packet has been retransmitted, and

the determination control part sets the length of the predetermined time period based on the time interval and the retransmission number.

8. The image forming apparatus according to claim 2, wherein

the determination control part is configured to change the length of the predetermined time period.

9. The image forming apparatus according to claim 2, wherein

the predetermined time period is fixed such that the predetermined time does not vary.

10. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein

the determination control part

stores a plurality of filter information sets, and

performs the rewrite operation by selecting one of the filter information sets in a predetermined order as the filter information and writing the filter information entirely or partially to the determination part.

11. The image forming apparatus according to claim 10, wherein

the filter information sets are fixed such that the information sets do not vary.

12. The image forming apparatus according to claim 10, further comprising:

a generation part that generates the filter information sets.

13. The image forming apparatus according to claim 12, wherein

the filter information contains information about a packet type of the network packet, and

the generation part, in the first mode, generates the filter information sets based on a reception frequency of each packet type of the network packet received by the packet transmitting and receiving part.

14. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein

the power supply part is composed with a main power supply part (11M) and a sub power supply part (11S),

the main power supply part is connected to the image forming part (12) and is configured to supply the electronic power to the image forming part in the first mode and not to supply the electronic power to the image forming part in the second mode such that the image forming part does not form the image on the recording medium in the second mode,

the sub power supply part is connected to the communication part (22), the power supply control part (31), the determination control part (32) and the packet transmitting and receiving part (33), and is configured to supply the electronic power to the communication part, the power supply control part, the determination control part and the packet transmitting and receiving part in both the first mode and the second mode such that the communication part receives the network packet in both the first mode and the second mode.