GB2521846A

GB2521846A - Remote control of devices in the home

Info

Publication number: GB2521846A
Application number: GB1400101.0A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Edmund Bolton; Samantha Stark
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2014-01-03
Filing date: 2014-01-03
Publication date: 2015-07-08
Also published as: GB201400101D0

Abstract

This application relates to the combination of a relay unit 32 and a handheld unit (70, Fig. 3). The handheld unit receives an instruction from a user (e.g. through the press of a button on the handheld unit) and transmits the instruction wirelessly to the relay unit. The relay unit may receive the wireless instruction using a Wi-Fi (RTM) or Bluetooth (RTM) receiver (56, Fig. 2), or the wireless signal may be received by an intermediate device which then forwards the signal to a receiver of the relay device over a wire, e.g. using powerline communication. The relay device has a standard lighting fitting (52, Fig. 2) which provides power to a source of visible illumination (60b, Fig. 2), the receiver unit, and an infra-red (IR) transmitter (60a, Fig. 2). The relay device converts the received instruction into a code intelligible to a domestic appliance 16, 22 and transmits the code from the IR transmitter. The source of visible light can be one or more LEDs, and the IR transmitter can be an LED. Thus, a line-of sight communication protocol can be run from an elevated position such as a light fitting, which is easily integrated into a home automation system.

Description

Remote Control of Devices in the Home

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present application relates to the remote control of devices in the home.

BACKGROUND ART

Home automation is the automation of devices and tasks within the domestic environment. Home automation may include the centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks for gates, doors and other systems, and the like. It has the potential to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security. Home automation for the elderly and disabled can provide increased quality of life for persons who might otherwise require caregivers or institutional care. The popularity of home automation has been increasing greatly in recent years due to increased affordability and greater simplicity through smartphone and tablet connectivity.

A home automation system integrates electrical devices in a house with each other.

The techniques employed in home automation include those in building automation as well as the control of domestic activities, such as home entertainment systems, houseplant and yard watering, pet feeding, changing the ambiance "scenes" for different events (such as dinners or parties), and the use of domestic robots. Devices may be connected through a computer network to allow control by a personal computer, and may allow remote access from the internet. Through the integration of information technologies with the home environment, systems and appliances are able to communicate in an integrated manner which results in convenience, energy efficiency, and safety benefits. However, problems with complexity, multiple incompatible standards, and the resulting expense have limited the penetration of home automation to homes of the wealthy or ambitious hobbyists.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

One of the principal problems in home automation, and a significant contributor to S the expense involved, can be the establishment of an adequate data network around the home. Unlike commercial premises, homes rarely have structured cabling systems or the necessary ducting in which to place cabling. Wireless networking protocols assist with this but can be limited in range and penetration. Other forms of wireless communication, such as infra-red (IR) transmitters, are generally line-of-sight only. Also, whilst some devices are currently provided with built-in networking capabilities (such as smart TVs and the like), this is not universal and there will be a substantial period during which a large number of "legacy" devices without networking support will need to be controlled.

On a more immediate scale, there are a significant number of homes without home automation in which appliances (such as televisions, audio systems, audio-video systems etc) need to be controlled but existing remote control arrangements are inadequate.

Typically, such devices are provided with remote controls that communicate via infra-red (IR) signals and which are (as noted above) line-of-sight only. If there are items such as furniture in the way, this presents problems. As a result, domestic spaces tend to be organised and laid out with a view to enabling line-of-sight communication between seating areas and appliances; this may or may not be convenient.

The present invention seeks to address these difficulties. It provides a control apparatus for a domestic appliance, comprising, in combination, a relay unit having a standard lighting fitting which provides power to a source of visible light, a receiver unit, and an IR transmitter, together with a handheld unit in communication with the receiver unit via a wireless transmitter, the relay unit and the handheld unit being arranged to receive an instruction from a user, convert that to a code intelligible to the domestic appliance, and retransmit the code from the IR transmitter.

The source of visible light can be one or more LED5, and the IR transmitter can be an LED, thereby allowing for an integrated design in which the JR transmitter does not stand out or is unsightly.

The standard lighting fitting is preferably a twist and lock fitting such as a GU1O fitting. A converter can be provided to adapt the standard light fitting to a different standard light fitting, such as an Edison screw or a bayonet cap.

The relay unit can include a step-down power converter to convert mains AC power received at the standard light fitting to low-voltage power for at least the receiver unit and the JR transmitter (and also the light source if desired). Alternatively, the relay unit can be for fitting to a low-voltage light supply only.

The receiver unit can be a wireless communication device such as a WiFi or Bluetooth device, or a powerline networking device. Where it is a wireless device, it can communicate directly with the wireless transmitter. Alternatively, the control apparatus can further comprise an intermediate unit adapted to receive signals from the wireless transmitter and send signals to the receiver unit.

The handheld unit is preferably a portable computing device running an application, such as a smartphone.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

An embodiment of the present invention will now be described by way of example, with reference to the accompanying figures in which; Figure 1 shows elements of a domestic room; Figure 2 shows a relay unit according to the present invention; and Figure 3 shows a handheld unit according to the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

Figure 1 shows a domestic setting in which the present application can be employed.

A room 10 has a window 12 and a door 14, and houses a range of furniture and consumer devices including a television 16, a sofa 18 facing the television 16, and a sideboard 20 on which are placed an audio system 22 with speakers 24, 26. An electrical cord 28 is suspended from the ceiling 30 and carries a light fitting 32 at a free end thereof. The electrical cord 28 is connected to the domestic electricity supply of the house in order to provide power to the light fitting 32.

The television 16 and the audio system 22 will usually have remote-control devices provided by the original manufacturers. These usually operate via JR transmission, with wavelengths such as 940nm, 850nm or 7SOnm being common. They are however line-of-sight only, so the arrangement of the room of figure 1 is non-optimal in that the sofa 18 S (naturally) faces towards the television 16 and away from the audio system 22. Therefore, to control the audio system the user must either get up from the sofa 18 or turn around to point the remote control over the back of the sofa, which to an extent negates the purpose of a remote control. Other similar problems of greater or lesser seriousness may arise according to the particular layout of other rooms. Further, the range of a battery-powered IR transmitter is limited, and may be unable to extend from one end of some domestic rooms to the other.

The light fitting 32 does however have an uninterrupted view of the whole of the room, positioned in its usual location near to the ceiling 30 at substantially the centre of the room. Other forms of light fitting such as standard lamps and wall-mounted lamps have a similar view from an elevated location from which the majority of the room is visible. Thus, these light fittings combine a viewpoint that has line-of-sight communication with much more of the room than other locations, with a supply of electrical power that can be used to power a transmitter device. The light fitting in its usual position is also no more than half the room's length from any appliance in the room, and the availability of mains power means that the output of the 1k transmitter can be greater as there is no need to conserve battery life.

Figure 2 shows a bulb/relay unit 50 able to take advantage of this. It is in the form of a standard LED bulb with a standard CUb connector 52 at its base for connecting to a corresponding socket in the light fitting. The device may be supplied with a converter with a socket that accepts the GU1O connector and a plug having an alternative standard lighting connector such as one of the bayonet cap fittings (BC or SBC also known as B22d and B15d) or an Edison screw fitting (LES, MES, CES, SES, ES or GES, aka ES, ElO, E12, E14, E27 and E40), a different halogen fitting (G4, G9, GU4, GU5.3, (210), a fluorescent tube fitting (CS or G13) or a compact fluorescent fitting (G23 or the like). Alternatively, the device may be fitted directly with one of those (or another) standard lighting connector. This provides mains AC power at the prevailing local voltage such as 11OV or 240V RMS to a power converter 54 which outputs a low-voltage 12V DC supply. This is fed to both a WiFi receiver unit 56 (which may alternatively be Bluetooth or another wireless protocol) and a driver unit 58; the receiver unit receives commands from the handheld unit (to be described) and passes them to the driver unit 58. This selectively illuminates one or more of a range of LED5 60 (light-emitting diodes) that are mounted in the relay unit 50 below the driver unit S and immediately behind a glass cover 62. These may be arranged as desired, usually in a two-dimensional array of which one line is shown in figure 2. Thus, in practice there are additional lines of LED5 in front of and behind the central line 60 that is illustrated. The two outermost LED5 60a are IR LED5, adapted to emit infra-red light, whilst the remaining LED5 60b emit visible-light. It is preferable to place the IR LED5 60a at an outer location within the array so that they gain the greatest spread across the room 10.

Thus, on the basis of the signals received at the receiver unit 56, the driver unit 58 can selectively illuminate the visible-light LEDs 60b to light the room, and/or send coded signals to the appliances 16, 22 via appropriate pulsing of the IR LED5 60a. It is preferable for the functions of the driver unit 58 to include illuminating the lights, as the unit needs mains power at all times in order to be able to control the appliances. Thus, the circuit could be left permanently live; it may be noted that figure 1 does not show a light switch, although of course one may be provided if desired or required for isolation purposes.

Figure 3 shows the handheld unit 70 of the present invention. This may be a physical device in the manner of a conventional universal remote control, or a software implementation in the form of an application for a smartphone, tablet device, or other portable computing device. In either case, a range of buttons or button-like controls 72 can be provided or displayed for activation by the user, including a range of on-off buttons 74 for the lighting and the various appliances within range, and a numeric keypad 76 for changing channels or tracks (etc), and the usual AV controls 78. An advantage of an application-based system is that the range of available controls can be adapted according to the appliances that known to be available. Once the user presses a button/button image 72, the device or the application selects the sequence of IR pulses necessary to produce the requested effect on the appliance in question and sends those to the relay unit via an integrated wireless transmitter within the device or the smartphone, tablet etc. The device or app may therefore need to be programmed with the type of appliance that is under control The handheld unit may alternative communicate with an intermediate unit, such as a computing device. In that case, the handheld device and the relay unit need not use the same wireless networking protocol and only need use one that can communicate with the intermediate unit. Indeed, the relay unit need not communicate wirelessly at all, and could S communicate with the intermediate unit via a powerline networking protocol (for example), with the receiver unit 56 being replaced accordingly. In practice, however, the most convenient protocol will be WiFi, although this may change as networking protocols develop.

In that case, the relay unit and the handheld unit may communicate via a WiFi router or via an ad-hoc network, and the intermediate unit may be connected via cables or wirelessly to the router. An advantage of the intermediate unit is that it allows the integration of the system into a wider home automation system, with (for example) the relay unit being just one of several relay units controllable via the handheld unit, and the handheld unit being just one of several means of sending control signals to the relay unit. For example, motion sensors could report to the intermediate unit that a person has been detected, and the lights and/or the television (etc) activated automatically as a result.

Thus, in the application, "remotely controlling" means sending a signal between the controlling device and transmitter, either directly or indirectly through some sort of intermediate device or bridge. From a software perspective, a bridge would help the scalability of many devices communicating with many transmitters. For example, the bridge could accept signals from many controlling devices to the one bridge, and send signals to many relay units containing 1k transmitters, and from there to many slave devices. Of course, "many" means one or more. The transmitter could trigger many slave devices at different times or multiple slave devices of the same type simultaneously. One relay unit may contain more than one JR diode, and/or the user may have multiple relay units.

Various modifications may be made to the above-described embodiment without departing from the scope of the invention. For example, the bulb/relay unit could incorporate a rechargeable battery in order to cater for temporary power interruptions, such as if the visible-light LEDs are controlled from a conventional wall-mounted light switch.

Equally, the device could be a fitting that sits between the light socket and an otherwise conventional bulb, taking power from the line and allowing otherwise normal control of the light bulb.

The range of "slave" electronic devices that can be controlled is generally unlimited.

These will tend to be larger electrical items e.g. washing machines/televisions that you would expect to be visible due to their size, but could also include kettles/locks/cameras etc. The "electronic" simply refers to the fact that the JR receiver must interpret the signal using S electronics and the device could function mechanically once e.g. a switch has been flipped.

This allows for e.g. a self-filling bath tub to be included, or the like.

It will of course be understood that many variations may be made to the above-described embodiment without departing from the scope of the present invention.

Claims

CLAIMS1. A control apparatus for a domestic appliance, comprising, in combination, a relay unit having a standard lighting fitting which provides power to a source of visible light, a receiver unit, and an JR transmitter, together with a handheld unit in communication with the receiver unit via a wireless transmitter, the relay unit and the handheld unit being arranged to receive an instruction from a user, convert that to a code intelligible to the domestic appliance, and retransmit the code from the IR transmitter.
2. A control apparatus according to claim 1 in which the source of visible light is one or more LED5.
3. A control apparatus according to claim 1 or claim 2 in which the IR transmitter is an LED.
4. A control apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims in which the standard lighting fitting is a twist and lock fitting.
5. A control apparatus according to claim 4 in which the twist and lock fitting is a GU1O fitting.
6. A control apparatus according any one of the preceding claims in which the relay unit includes a converter to adapt the standard light fitting to a different standard light fitting.
7. A control apparatus according any one of the preceding claims in which the relay unit includes a step-down power converter to convert mains AC power received at the standard light fitting to low-voltage power for at least the receiver unit and the 1k transmitter.
8. A control apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims in which the receiver unit is a wireless communication device.
9. A control apparatus according to claim 8 in which the receiver unit is a WiFi or Bluetooth device.
10. A control apparatus according to claim 8 or claim 9 in which the receiver unit is able to communicate directly with the wireless transmitter.
11. A control apparatus according to any one of claims ito 7 in which the receiver unit is a powerline networking device.
12. A control apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims in which the handheld unit is a portable computing device running an application.
13. A control apparatus according to claim 12 in which the portable computing device is a smartphone.
14. A control apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 9 or 11 to 13, further comprising an intermediate unit adapted to receive signals from the wireless transmitter and send signals to the receiver unit.
15. A control apparatus substantially as herein described with reference to and/or as illustrated.