REPORTING THE STATE OF AN APPARATUS TO A REMOTE COMPUTER

• US 20120143970A1
• Filed: 10/03/2011
• Published: 06/07/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 07/28/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: PTC Inc.
• Original Assignee: Axeda (PTC Inc.)
• Inventors: Hansen, James R.
• Granted Patent: US 8,898,294 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• 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 11/2294 by remote test
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3055 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the status of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring if the computing system is on, off, available, not available error or fault processing without redundancy G06F11/0703; error detection or correction by redundancy in data representation G06F11/08; error detection or correction by redundancy in operation G06F11/14; error detection or correction by redundancy in hardware G06F11/16
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3058 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring environmental properties or parameters of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring of power, currents, temperature, humidity, position, vibrations thermal management in cooling arrangements of a computing system G06F1/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3086 where the reporting involves the use of self describing data formats, i.e. metadata, markup languages, human readable formats
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/875 Monitoring of systems including the internet
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

The state of an apparatus is reported to a remote computer using an embedded device in the apparatus. The embedded device detects the state, generates a message that reports the state using a self-describing computer language, and sends the message to the remote computer. The remote computer receives the message and extracts the state of the embedded device from the message.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for using a device embedded in an apparatus to report the state of the apparatus to a remote computer, comprising:

detecting the state of the apparatus;

generating a message that reports the state of the apparatus using a self-describing computer language; and

sending the message to the remote computer.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the message comprises an electronic mail message.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the message comprises a hypertext transfer protocol command.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the state is indicative of an error condition in the apparatus.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the error condition comprises a variable that deviates from an acceptable value or a predetermined range of acceptable values.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting the state comprises receiving the state from the apparatus.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting the state comprises retrieving the state periodically from the apparatus.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting the state comprises:

obtaining an identifier for the apparatus, the identifier relating to the state of the apparatus; and

reading the state from the apparatus using the identifier.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining if the state of the apparatus has changed;

wherein the electronic mail message is generated if the state of the apparatus has changed.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein determining comprises comparing the state received from the apparatus to a previous state of the apparatus.

11-75. -75. (canceled)