Data acquisition engine and system for an appliance

• US 20070156882A1
• Filed: 12/29/2006
• Published: 07/05/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/09/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Whirlpool Corporation
• Original Assignee: Whirlpool Corporation
• Inventors: McCoy, Richard, Ebrom, Matthew, Kmet, David, Glotzbach, Patrick, Whipple, Andrew, Carroll, Joshua, Putnam, Daniel
• Granted Patent: US 7,921,429 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/544 Remote
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/26 Special purpose or proprietary protocols or architectures network applications for proprietary or special purpose networking environments H04L67/12

Abstract

A data acquisition method comprising looking into a memory heap of event structures having condition parameters of at least one of memory pointers, event operators, and arguments; identifying event conditions that evaluate as true by evaluating the condition parameters for the even structures; and generating a notification message when a true condition is found.

Claims

1. A data acquisition method comprising:

looking into a memory heap of event structures having condition parameters of at least one of memory pointers, event operators, and arguments;

identifying event conditions that evaluate as true by evaluating the condition parameters for the even structures; and

generating a notification message when a true condition is found.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the memory heap is allocated during compiling.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the event structure is created during run time from at least one network message.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the memory heap is associated with a control program of an appliance having an internal network.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the even structures are created by an application program interface associated with the control program.

6. The method according to claim 4, wherein the operation of the control program is altered in response to the notification message.

7. The method according to claim 4, wherein notification message is sent over the internal network to an external network.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein each event structure has a unique identifier.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein the notification message is sent over a network having multiple nodes.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein the notification message is sent over the network to one of the multiple nodes.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein the notification message is invoked on a call back function.

12. The method according to claim 1, and selectively enabling and disabling the generating of the notification message.

13. The method according to claim 12, and sending a notification message when the notification message is selectively enabled and disabled.

14. The method according to claim 1, wherein the evaluation of the condition parameters comprises applying an event operator selected from the list of:

greater than, less than, equal to, on change, deadband, and bitmast.

15. The method according to claim 1, wherein the generating of the notification message is done after the evaluation of the condition parameters for multiple event structures.

16. The method according to claim 1, and comprising evaluation multiple notification messages to determine the cumulative effect of multiple event structures.