Control system
First Claim
1. A remotely controlled controller for an electricity supply contained within at least one of meter and an adapter arranged to be mounted between a demountable meter and a supply socket, the controller comprising:
- a temperature compensated paging receiver;
a decoder for decoding control messages received via the paging receiver;
at least one of the paging receiver and the decoder having a unique address identifying an individual controller;
a power switch for connecting power between the supply socket and a load; and
a control arrangement for receiving decoded messages from the decoder and arranged to act upon control instructions included in decoded control messages to cause the power switch to connect or disconnect the supply socket to and from the load;
wherein said messages have a format of a first set of ASCII check sum characters, followed by a second set of ASCII sub address characters, and a third set of ASCII command message characters.
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Accused Products
Abstract
In a system for remotely controlling the supply of electric power to customer premises, each customer premises is fitted with a power-switching arrangement coupled to a paging receiver (5-1, 5-2, 5-3). A utility company supplying the electric power can input requests to a server (1), optionally via a terminal (2) or a network link (3). A software application running on the server generates a control instruction in response to a request and sends it to a paging service (4) for transmission over a paging network. When a paging message is received at one of said customer-premises paging receivers, if the control instruction is appropriately addressed the power-switching arrangement will put it into effect, for example to connect or reconnect the customer premises power supply.
51 Citations
47 Claims
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1. A remotely controlled controller for an electricity supply contained within at least one of meter and an adapter arranged to be mounted between a demountable meter and a supply socket, the controller comprising:
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a temperature compensated paging receiver; a decoder for decoding control messages received via the paging receiver; at least one of the paging receiver and the decoder having a unique address identifying an individual controller; a power switch for connecting power between the supply socket and a load; and a control arrangement for receiving decoded messages from the decoder and arranged to act upon control instructions included in decoded control messages to cause the power switch to connect or disconnect the supply socket to and from the load;
wherein said messages have a format of a first set of ASCII check sum characters, followed by a second set of ASCII sub address characters, and a third set of ASCII command message characters. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40)
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41. A system for remotely controlling the supply of electric power to customer premises comprising:
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a central control computer programmed to produce control instructions for transmission to a controller contained within at least one of a meter and an adapter located between a supply socket and a demountable meter at each customer'"'"'s premises, each controller having at least one of a unique identifier and belonging to a group with a single common unique identifier; wherein the central control computer is programmed to produce a command message having a format of a first set of ASCII check sum characters, followed by a second set of ASCII sub address characters, and third set of ASCII command message characters, and a paging system for transmitting the command message from the central control computer to each controller;
wherein each controller comprises a temperature compensated paging receiver, a decoder for decoding command messages addressed to that controller, a switching arrangement for connecting the supply socket to and from a load, and a control arrangement for receiving control messages from the decoder and arranged to act upon the instructions to cause the switching arrangement to connect or disconnect the supply socket to/from the load. - View Dependent Claims (42, 43, 44, 45, 46)
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47. A message structure for sending commands to a remote controller, the message structure comprising a first set of six ASCII check sum characters, followed by a second set of ASCII sub address characters, and third set of ASCII command message characters, and in which the second set comprises eight characters and the third set is a variable length string of characters in which the check sum is calculated according a method having the following steps:
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A) add together the ASCII value of each odd character position starting with the first character of the second set and continuing to the end of the third set, B) truncate the result to 12 binary bits if necessary (FFF hex), C) starting with a most significant nibble of the 12 bit value calculated in Step b), function OR this value to 30 hex after bit shifting the nibble to the least significant position to produce the first check sum character. D) repeat the step c) for the last two nibbles to produce the second and third check sum characters, E) add together the ASCII value of each even character position starting with the first character of the second set and continuing to the end of the third set, F) truncate the result to 12 binary bits if necessary (FFFhex), G) repeat steps c)and d)using the result from step f)instead of step b)to produce a final three characters of the check sum.
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Specification