Appliance monitoring system and method

• US 8,599,008 B2
• Filed: 07/26/2010
• Issued: 12/03/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/26/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Haier US Appliance Solutions, Inc. DBA GE Appliances (Haier Group Company)
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Watson, Eric K., Hamel, Timothy A., DeVos, Richard, Venkatakrishnan, Natarajan, Dawes, Charles, Kello, Michael, Gottipati, Rajendra Prasad, Ganiere, Donald, Root, Steven Keith
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Tai T
• Application Number:
  US12/843,300
• Publication Number:
  US 20120019378A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,226 Days
• Field of Search: 340/539.1, 340/539.13, 340/618, 340/679, 340/870.17, 340/10.2, 340/5.1, 340/5.6, 700/276, 700/286, 700/295, 700/296
• US Class Current: 340/539.1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2825 Reporting to a device located outside the home and the home network access arrangements H04L12/2856; for remote control or remote monitoring of applications H04L67/025; telephonic communication systems adapted for combination with telemetering systems H04M11/002
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2829 involving user profiles according to which the execution of a home appliance functionality is automatically triggered
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning

Abstract

A method and system for monitoring an appliance is disclosed. The method includes establishing a wireless communication connection between a communication module in an appliance and a communication network, transmitting operational data in real-time from the appliance to an external monitoring system over the communication network, determining a status of a component of the appliance from the real-time operational data, and if a failure mode of the component is detected, initiating a service protocol corresponding to the component.

Claims

1. A method for monitoring an appliance, comprising:

automatically establishing a wireless communication connection directly between a communication module in the appliance and a communication network;

monitoring operational data of a component of the appliance against a respective predetermined operational limit of the component; and

only if the operational data exceeds the respective predetermined operational limit, transmitting the operational data in real-time from the appliance to an external monitoring system, during operation of the appliance, over the communication network;

determining a status of the component from the real-time operational data; and

if a failure mode of the component is detected by the external monitoring system, initiating a service protocol corresponding to the component.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication network is the Internet, a WiFi network connection or a cellular communication network.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication module is configured to receive the operational data from the component of the appliance for transmission to the external monitoring system.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication module is configured to poll the component of the appliance for the operational data.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the component of the appliance is configured to periodically transmit updated operational data to the communication module.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the appliance is a refrigerator and the operational data of the component corresponds to a run-time of a compressor of the refrigerator, wherein the method further comprises the external monitoring system detecting the run-time of the compressor and determining that a door of the refrigerator is in an open state.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the component is a compressor and the operational data corresponds to a run time of the compressor.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising forming a network of appliances, each appliance comprises a connection to the communication network, and using the real-time data from each appliance to synchronize energy usage of each appliance in the network of appliances.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising synchronizing a time module in the appliance with a time module of the external monitoring system.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising time stamping the real-time operational data with a time stamp from the external monitoring system.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising analyzing an operational efficiency of the appliance using the real-time operational data.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the operational data is sent from the appliance using, a hypertext transfer post protocol.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the status of the component comprises a predictive failure analysis by comparing, a current operational status of the component to a prior operational performance of the component.

14. An appliance monitoring system comprising:

an appliance;

a communication module coupled to the appliance;

a local area network in communicative proximity to the communication module, wherein the communication module is configured to be communicatively coupled to the local area network, the local area network being configured to enable communications from the appliance over the Internet;

a service center communicatively coupled to the local area network via the Internet, the service center being configured to receive real-time operational data from the appliance,

wherein the appliance is in a network of appliances, each appliance in the network of appliances being separately coupled to the local area network by a communication module; and

an energy synchronization module in each appliance, each energy synchronization module being configured to communicate with each other energy synchronization module in the network to synchronize energy usage of each appliance in the network of appliances.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the local area network is a wireless local area network and the communication module coupled to the appliance is a wireless communication controller.

16. The system of claim 14, further comprising a communication link between the communication module and each component of the appliance, wherein the communication module is configured to receive the real-time operational data corresponding to the each component.

17. The system of claim 14, further comprising a time module in the appliance, the time module being configured to receive a synchronized time setting update from the service center.

18. The system of claim 14, further comprising a Voice over Internet Protocol module in the appliance for providing voice communications from the appliance.