Out-of-band monitoring and managing of self-service terminals (SSTs)

• US 9,552,246 B2
• Filed: 01/31/2014
• Issued: 01/24/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 01/31/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NCR Corporation
• Original Assignee: NCR Corporation
• Inventors: Horgan, Kevin
• Primary Examiner(s): MCCARTHY, CHRISTOPHER S
• Application Number:
  US14/169,537
• Publication Number:
  US 20150220381A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,089 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0748 in a remote unit communicating with a single-box computer node experiencing an error/fault remote testing G06F11/2294
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0769 Readable error formats, e.g. cross-platform generic formats, human understandable formats
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0772 Means for error signaling, e.g. using interrupts, exception flags, dedicated error registers
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/20 Administration of product repair or maintenance
• CPC Class Codes: G07F 17/3234 about the performance of a gaming system, e.g. revenue, diagnosis of the gaming system
• CPC Class Codes: G07F 9/001 Interfacing with vending machines using mobile or wearable devices
• CPC Class Codes: G07F 9/026 for alarm, monitoring and auditing in vending machines or means for indication, e.g. when empty
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/08 for authentication of entities cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication H04L9/32

Abstract

A portable memory device is interfaced to a SST and authenticated; a system application on the SST writes diagnostic data to the device. The portable memory device is subsequently interfaced to an enterprise system and the diagnostic data is pulled to the enterprise system for analysis. In an embodiment, the enterprise system pushes informational data regarding maintenance and support to the portable device when the portable device is subsequently interfaced to the SST; the informational data is pushed to the SST for presentation and viewing by a service engineer.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

identifying, via a server, a connection to the server made by a processing device that has a portable memory device interfaced to the portable memory device;

obtaining, via the server, operational metrics for a Self-Service Terminal (SST) from a background process executing on the processing device, the operational metrics stored on the portable memory device;

adding, via the server, the operational metrics with other operational metrics previously obtained for the SST or one or more other SSTs, including analyzing the operational metrics and other operation metrics to identify a potential maintenance issue associated with at least one of the SST and the one or more other SSTs, generating enterprise information related to the potential maintenance issue, and directing the background process to write the enterprise information to the portable memory device.

2. A method, comprising:

identifying, via a server, a connection to the server made by a processing device that has a portable memory device interfaced to the portable memory device;

obtaining, via the server, operational metrics for a Self-Service Terminal (SST) from a background process executing on the processing device, the operational metrics stored on the portable memory device; and

receiving, via the server, a request from the background process to provide enterprise information to the background process to write to the portable memory device.