Device with improved serial communication

• US 7,405,650 B2
• Filed: 12/20/2004
• Issued: 07/29/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/19/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Gentex Corporation
• Original Assignee: Gentex Corporation
• Inventors: Andrus, Jeremy C., Turnbull, Robert R., Friend, Timothy R., Bechtel, Jon H.
• Primary Examiner(s): TRIEU, VAN THANH
• Application Number:
  US11/017,128
• Publication Number:
  US 20050135465A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,317 Days
• Field of Search: 340/426.16, 340/459, 340/460, 340/461, 340/462, 340/517, 375/220, 375/222, 375/354, 375/360, 375/376, 370/503, 370/465, 327/113, 327/114, 341/143, 341/155, 701/36, 701/48, 708/490, 708/231
• US Class Current: 340/426.16
• CPC Class Codes: A61M 16/208 Non-controlled one-way valves, e.g. exhalation, check, pop-off non-rebreathing valves
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0043 Realisations of complexity reduction techniques, e.g. use of look-up tables
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0057 Block codes H04L1/0061, H04L1/0064 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 25/4904 using self-synchronising codes, e.g. split-phase codes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 25/493 by transition coding, i.e. the time-position or direction of a transition being encoded before transmission

Abstract

The present invention relates to various improvements to digital communications and various applications of the improved digital communications.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising:

at least one micro-controller;

at least one digital serial communication link comprising a signal having encoding that is transition specific; and

at least one image sensor in communication with said micro-controller via said digital serial communications link; and

said signal comprising only one signal state change per transmitted bit.

2. An apparatus, comprising:

at least one interface unit;

at least one digital serial communication link comprising a first electronic signal comprising only one signal state change per transmitted bit, said first electronic signal comprising encoding that is transition specific;

at least one remote unit in communication with said interface unit via said digital serial communications link; and

a second electronic signal different from said first electronic signal, wherein one of said first electronic signal and said second electronic signal is employed to send data from said interface unit to said remote unit and the other one of said first electronic signal and said second electronic signal is employed to send data from said remote unit to said interface unit.

3. An apparatus as in claim 2 wherein said interface unit comprises a micro-controller.

4. An apparatus as in claim 3 wherein said remote unit comprises a micro-controller.

5. An apparatus as in claim 2 wherein said remote unit comprises an image sensor.

6. An apparatus as in claim 2 wherein transmissions from said interface unit to said remote unit comprises a lower or equal baud rate compared to transmissions from said remote unit to said interface unit.

7. An apparatus as in claim 2 wherein said second electronic signal comprises a protocol selected from the group comprising:

RS-232, IEEE 1394-1995, IEEE-1395, MOST, CAN and AMI-C.