CN113115998A

CN113115998A - Smoking set

Info

Publication number: CN113115998A
Application number: CN202010061563.7A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 李新军; 陈伟; 胡瑞龙; 徐中立; 李永海
Original assignee: Shenzhen FirstUnion Technology Co Ltd
Current assignee: Shenzhen FirstUnion Technology Co Ltd
Priority date: 2020-01-16
Filing date: 2020-01-16
Publication date: 2021-07-16
Also published as: US20230044363A1; EP4091474A1; EP4091474A4; WO2021143838A1

Abstract

The application relates to the smoking set field, and provides a smoking set, which comprises a heating chamber and a heater; the first detection module is used for detecting whether an object exists at a first position in the heating chamber so as to output a first detection signal; the second detection module is used for detecting whether an object exists at a second position in the heating chamber so as to output a second detection signal; the microcontroller is configured to: collecting a first detection signal and a second detection signal; the presence of an object in the heating chamber is identified based on different combinations of the first detection signal and the second detection signal. The method comprises the steps of identifying the condition of an object existing in a heating chamber through different combinations of a first detection signal and a second detection signal; according to the recognition result, the heater can be controlled to be started and heated or be in a closed state, the situation that the heater is started and heated by being triggered by a foreign matter falling into the heating chamber by mistake is avoided, and the user experience is improved.

Description

Smoking set

Technical Field

The application relates to the smoking set field, especially relates to a smoking set.

Background

Smoking articles such as cigarettes and cigars burn tobacco during use to produce an aerosol. Attempts have been made to provide alternatives to these tobacco-burning articles by creating products that release compounds without burning. An example of such a product is a so-called heat not burn product, which releases compounds by heating tobacco instead of burning tobacco.

Patent publication No. CN209202153U discloses a control method of an electronic cigarette and an electronic cigarette, in which tobacco inserted into the electronic cigarette triggers a tobacco heating signal, and the tobacco heating signal controls a tobacco heating element to operate, so as to bake the tobacco. Wherein, the triggering mode of the tobacco heating signal comprises: after the tobacco is inserted into the electronic cigarette cavity, the tobacco extrudes a pressure sensor in the electronic cigarette cavity, and the pressure sensor generates a tobacco heating signal when detecting the pressure change; or after the tobacco is inserted into the electronic cigarette cavity, a capacitance sensor in the electronic cigarette cavity detects capacitance change and generates a tobacco heating signal; or after the tobacco is inserted into the electronic cigarette cavity, the tobacco extrudes the tact switch in the electronic cigarette cavity, and the tact switch is triggered to send a tobacco heating signal.

The scheme has the problems that after foreign matters fall into the electronic cigarette cavity, a tobacco heating signal can be triggered, so that the heating element is started to heat; this electron cigarette can't discern the situation that has the foreign matter in the electron cigarette cavity.

Disclosure of Invention

The application provides a smoking set, aims at solving the problem that current smoking set can't discern the situation that has the foreign matter in the heating chamber.

A first aspect of the present application provides a smoking article comprising a heating chamber and a heater for heating a smoking article removably placed in the heating chamber to generate an aerosol for smoking; the smoking set further comprises:

the first detection module is used for detecting whether an object exists at a first position in the heating chamber so as to output a first detection signal;

the second detection module is used for detecting whether an object exists at a second position in the heating chamber so as to output a second detection signal;

a microcontroller configured to:

collecting the first detection signal and the second detection signal;

identifying an object condition present in the heating chamber based on different combinations of the first detection signal and the second detection signal.

The smoking set provided by the application identifies the condition of an object existing in the heating chamber through different combinations of the first detection signal and the second detection signal; according to the recognition result, the heater can be controlled to be started and heated or be in a closed state, the situation that the heater is started and heated by being triggered by a foreign matter falling into the heating chamber by mistake is avoided, and the user experience is improved.

Drawings

One or more embodiments are illustrated by way of example in the accompanying drawings, which correspond to the figures in which like reference numerals refer to similar elements and which are not to scale unless otherwise specified.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a control for a smoking article provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 2 is a schematic view of a smoking article provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 3 is a schematic cross-sectional view of a smoking article provided by an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 4 is a schematic view of a heater having a metal elastic sheet according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

Detailed Description

To facilitate an understanding of the present application, the present application is described in more detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and detailed description. It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being "secured to" another element, it can be directly on the other element or intervening elements may also be present. When an element is referred to as being "connected" to another element, it can be directly connected to the other element or intervening elements may be present. The terms "upper", "lower", "left", "right", "inner", "outer" and the like as used herein are for illustrative purposes only.

Unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this application belongs. The terminology used in the description of the present application is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the present application. As used herein, the term "and/or" includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items.

As shown in fig. 1-3, the present application provides a smoking article 10, where the smoking article 10 at least includes a heater 11, a heating chamber 12, a first detection module 13, a second detection module 14, a driving module 15, a cover 16, an input module 17, a prompt module 18, and a microcontroller 19, which are disposed in a housing.

The heater 11 is used to heat smoking articles removably placed in the heating chamber 12 to generate an aerosol for smoking. A smoking article comprises an aerosol-forming substrate for use with a smoking article 10 to volatilise at least one component of the aerosol-forming substrate.

An aerosol-forming substrate is a substrate capable of releasing volatile compounds that can form an aerosol. Such volatile compounds may be released by heating the aerosol-forming substrate. The aerosol-forming substrate may be solid or liquid or comprise solid and liquid components. The aerosol-forming substrate may be adsorbed, coated, impregnated or otherwise loaded onto a carrier or support. The aerosol-forming substrate may conveniently be part of an aerosol-generating article or a smoking article.

The aerosol-forming substrate may comprise nicotine. The aerosol-forming substrate may comprise tobacco, for example may comprise a tobacco-containing material containing volatile tobacco flavour compounds which are released from the aerosol-forming substrate when heated. Preferred aerosol-forming substrates may comprise homogenised tobacco material, for example deciduous tobacco. The aerosol-forming substrate may comprise at least one aerosol-former, which may be any suitable known compound or mixture of compounds which, in use, facilitates stable aerosol formation and is substantially resistant to thermal degradation at the operating temperature of the aerosol-generating system. Suitable aerosol-forming agents are well known in the art and include, but are not limited to: polyhydric alcohols such as triethylene glycol, 1, 3-butanediol and glycerin; esters of polyhydric alcohols, such as glycerol mono-, di-or triacetate; and fatty acid esters of mono-, di-or polycarboxylic acids, such as dimethyldodecanedioate and dimethyltetradecanedioate. Preferred aerosol formers are polyhydric alcohols or mixtures thereof, such as triethylene glycol, 1, 3-butanediol, and most preferably glycerol.

The heater 11 may be a central heating mode (in which the heater is in direct contact with the aerosol-forming substrate through the periphery of the heater) or a peripheral heating mode (in which the cylindrical heater wraps the aerosol-forming substrate), or may be a heater that heats the aerosol-forming substrate through one or more of heat conduction, electromagnetic induction, chemical reaction, infrared action, resonance, photoelectric conversion, and photothermal conversion to generate aerosol for inhalation.

The following description will be made with the heater 11 as an infrared heater:

the infrared heater 11 includes a substrate and an infrared electrothermal layer (not shown in the drawings).

The matrix may be cylindrical, prismatic or other cylindrical, preferably cylindrical. The substrate internally forms a heating chamber 12 and the housing of the smoking article 10 has a through hole corresponding to the heating chamber 12 through which a smoking article is removable or insertable into the heating chamber 12.

An infrared electric heating layer is formed on the outer surface of the substrate, and receives electric power from a power source through the electrodes to generate heat and transfers the generated heat at least in the form of infrared radiation to a smoking article inserted in the heating chamber 12.

Referring again to fig. 3, a first detection module 13 is disposed downstream (first position) in the flow direction (indicated by a dotted arrow in the figure) of the aerosol in the heating chamber 12, and a second detection module 14 is disposed upstream (second position) in the flow direction of the aerosol in the heating chamber 12. That is, the first position and the second position are spaced apart along the aerosol flow direction in the heating chamber 12, and the first position is located downstream in the aerosol flow direction and the second position is located upstream in the aerosol flow direction.

In this example, the first detection module 13 includes a light emitting diode 131 and a photosensor 132, and the light emitting diode 131 and the photosensor 132 are disposed face to face along the lateral direction of the heating chamber 12. The second detection module 14 employs an ultrasonic sensor. The principle or operation of the sensor can refer to the prior art, and is not described in detail herein.

A first detecting module 13, configured to detect whether an object exists at a first position in the heating chamber 12 to output a first detection signal;

a second detection module 14 for detecting whether an object is present at a second position in the heating chamber 12 to output a second detection signal;

a microcontroller 19 configured to:

collecting the first detection signal and the second detection signal;

the presence of an object in the heating chamber 12 is identified based on different combinations of the first and second detection signals.

The recognition result can be the following four cases: the object present in the heating chamber 12 is a foreign object, the object present in the heating chamber 12 is a smoking article but not inserted in the heating chamber 12, the object present in the heating chamber 12 is a smoking article and inserted in the heating chamber 12 in place, no object is present in the heating chamber 12.

As an example, it is assumed that the first detection signal is high level indicating that an object is present at a first position in the heating chamber 12, and the first detection signal is low level indicating that an object is not present at a first position in the heating chamber 12; the second detection signal is similar.

When the first detection signal and the second detection signal acquired by the microcontroller 19 are (1, 1), it can be determined that the object present in the heating chamber 12 is a smoking article and that the smoking article is inserted into the heating chamber 12 in place. In the parentheses, the first "1" indicates that the first detection signal is at a high level (if "0", it indicates low level), and the second "1" indicates that the second detection signal is at a high level (if "0", it indicates low level), which are similar to each other and will not be described again.

When the first detection signal and the second detection signal acquired by the microcontroller 19 are (1, 0), it may be determined that the object present in the heating chamber 12 is a smoking article but that the smoking article is not inserted in place in the heating chamber 12;

when the first detection signal and the second detection signal collected by the microcontroller 19 are (0, 1), it is determined that the object existing in the heating chamber 12 is a foreign object;

when the first detection signal and the second detection signal collected by the microcontroller 19 are (0, 0), it may be determined that no object is present in the heating chamber 12.

Thus, by different combinations of the first detection signal and the second detection signal, the presence of an object in the heating chamber 12 is identified; according to the recognition result, the heater 11 can be controlled to be started to heat or be in a closed state, the situation that the heater 11 is started to heat by being triggered by the foreign matters falling into the heating chamber 12 by mistake is avoided, and the user experience is improved.

It should be noted that it is also possible that the identification result is one, two or three of the above four cases.

It should be further noted that, in order to avoid the situation that the acquired first detection signal or the acquired second detection signal has abnormal fluctuation, the processing may be performed in a multiple-acquisition manner. For example: when the foreign matter falls into the heating chamber 12, the first detection signal output by the first detection module 13 has "1" and "0" fluctuations (the output is "1" when the foreign matter passes through the first detection module 13, and the output is "0" when the foreign matter passes through the first detection module 13), and at this time, the microcontroller 19 can perform collection and judgment again after a preset time, so as to avoid the fluctuation situation.

Specifically, in one example, the microcontroller 19 is further configured to:

the heater 11 is controlled to be in the off state in a case where the object existing in the heating chamber 12 is a foreign object, or in a case where the object existing in the heating chamber 12 is a smoking article but the smoking article is not inserted into the heating chamber 12 in place, or in a case where the object is not present in the heating chamber 12.

In an example, the microcontroller 19 is further configured to:

generating a prompt message in the case where the object present in the heating chamber 12 is a foreign object, or in the case where the object present in the heating chamber 12 is a smoking article but the smoking article is not inserted in the heating chamber 12, or in the case where the object is not present in the heating chamber 12;

the smoking article 10 further comprises:

and the prompt module 18 is used for receiving the prompt information and prompting the user that an abnormity exists.

In this example, the user may be prompted by vibration, sound, light, or other means that the user can perceive, which is not limited herein.

In an example, the microcontroller 19 is further configured to:

in the case where the object present in the heating chamber 12 is a smoking article and the smoking article is inserted into the heating chamber 12 in place, the heater 11 is controlled to activate heating.

In this example, when the microcontroller 19 identifies the presence of an object in the heating chamber 12 as a smoking article, i.e. indicating that a smoking article has been inserted into the heating chamber 12 and into the second position of the heating chamber 12, the heater 11 is controlled to activate heating without the user manually controlling the heater 11 to activate heating.

Further, in this example, the microcontroller 19, is also configured to:

acquiring the first detection signal and the second detection signal again; determining whether the smoking article is still present in the heating chamber 12 based on the reacquired first and second detection signals;

in the absence of the smoking article in the heating chamber 12, the heater 11 is controlled to stop heating.

In this case, it may be determined that the smoking article has been removed from the heating chamber 12, and the heater 11 is controlled to stop heating accordingly.

Referring again to fig. 1-3, in one example, the smoking article 10 further comprises:

a cover 16 for covering or opening the heating chamber 12;

and a driving module 15, which is controlled by the microcontroller 19, and drives the cover 16 to move to cover or open the heating chamber 12.

In this example, the driving module 15 includes a motor and a gear, and the covering member 16 is a sliding cover provided with a rack engaged with the gear. The motor is controlled by the microcontroller 19 to drive the gear to rotate, and the gear rotates to drive the rack to move, so that the sliding cover moves left and right to cover or open the heating chamber 12. Fig. 2 shows the heating chamber 12 covered with the covering member 16; fig. 3 shows a state where the heating chamber 12 is opened by the covering member 16. It should be noted that the drive module 15 and the covering member 16 are not limited to the above.

In one example, the smoking article 10 further comprises:

the input module 17 is configured to receive an on command input by a user to generate an on signal or receive an off command input by the user to generate an off signal.

A microcontroller 19 further configured to:

receiving the opening signal, and controlling the driving module 15 to drive the covering member 16 to move according to the opening signal, so that the covering member 16 opens the heating chamber 12; or the like, or, alternatively,

receiving the closing signal, controlling the driving module 15 to drive the covering member 16 to move according to the closing signal, so that the covering member 16 covers the heating chamber 12.

In this example, the input module 17 is a key. In other examples, the input module 17 is not limited to a key, and may be, for example, a touch screen, a voice-controlled input device, or the like.

In an example, the microcontroller 19 is further configured to:

in the case where no object exists in the heating chamber 12, the control drive module 15 drives the covering member 16 to move so that the covering member 16 covers the heating chamber 12.

In this example, when there is no object in the heating chamber 12, the automatic control driving module 15 drives the covering member 16 to move, so that the covering member 16 covers the heating chamber 12 to prevent foreign objects from falling into the heating chamber 12.

Referring again to fig. 4, in one example, the second detection module 14 is implemented by a metal elastic sheet, and when the smoking article is inserted into the second position in the heating chamber 12, the smoking article generates a pressure on the metal elastic sheet to deform the metal elastic sheet, and the deformation can be converted into an electrical signal by the conversion circuit, so as to be collected by the microcontroller 19.

It should be noted that the first detection module 13 and the second detection module 14 are not limited to the above-mentioned case.

In one example, the first detection module 13 and the second detection module 14 may be sensing devices with a variable resistance value, which sense the position of the smoking article through the change in the resistance value. Sensing devices for changes in resistance include, but are not limited to, piezo resistors, sense resistors, resistive film matrices, thermistors, photoresistors, airflow switches, and coil windings.

In one example, the first detection module 13 and the second detection module 14 may be signal emitting and receiving devices that emit signals to detect and feed back position information of the smoking article to the signal emitting and receiving devices. The signal emitted by the signal emitting and receiving device includes, but is not limited to, infrared rays, radar waves, microwaves, ultrasonic waves, communication waves (radio waves, optical fibers, WIFI, quantum waves).

In one example, the first detection module 13 and the second detection module 14 may be mechanical-type switching devices, and the mechanical-type switching devices are electrically connected with the detection circuit. The detection circuit is switched on/off when the smoking article touches the mechanical type switching device. Mechanical switching devices include, but are not limited to, microswitches, push-button switches, dome switches, spring switches, membrane switches, toggle switches, push-pull switches, rotary switches, and magnet switches.

In an example, the first and

second detection modules

13 and 14 may be strain sensors or pressure sensors.

It should be noted that the description of the present application and the accompanying drawings set forth preferred embodiments of the present application, however, the present application may be embodied in many different forms and is not limited to the embodiments described in the present application, which are not intended as additional limitations to the present application, but are provided for the purpose of providing a more thorough understanding of the present disclosure. Moreover, the above-mentioned technical features are combined with each other to form various embodiments which are not listed above, and all the embodiments are regarded as the scope described in the present specification; further, modifications and variations may occur to those skilled in the art in light of the foregoing description, and it is intended to cover all such modifications and variations as fall within the scope of the appended claims.

Claims

1. A smoking article comprising a heating chamber and a heater for heating a smoking article removably placed in the heating chamber to generate an aerosol for smoking; characterized in that, the smoking set further comprises:

a microcontroller configured to:

collecting the first detection signal and the second detection signal;

2. The smoking article of claim 1, wherein the microcontroller is further configured to:

controlling the heater to be in an off state when an object existing in the heating chamber is a foreign object, or when the object existing in the heating chamber is a smoking article but the smoking article is not inserted into the heating chamber, or when the object does not exist in the heating chamber.

3. The smoking article of claim 2, wherein the microcontroller is further configured to:

generating a prompt message when the object is a foreign object, or when the object is a smoking article but the smoking article is not inserted into the heating chamber, or when the object is not present in the heating chamber;

the smoking set further comprises:

and the prompting module is used for receiving the prompting information and prompting the user that the abnormity exists.

4. The smoking article of claim 1, wherein the microcontroller is further configured to:

controlling the heater to start heating when the object existing in the heating chamber is a smoking article and the smoking article is inserted into the heating chamber in place.

5. The smoking article of claim 4, wherein the microcontroller is further configured to:

acquiring the first detection signal and the second detection signal again; determining whether the smoking article is still present in the heating chamber based on the reacquired first and second detection signals;

controlling the heater to stop heating if the smoking article is not present in the heating chamber.

6. A smoking article according to any one of claims 1-5, wherein said smoking article further comprises:

a cover for covering or opening the heating chamber;

and the driving module is used for receiving the control of the microcontroller and driving the covering part to move so as to cover or open the heating chamber.

7. A smoking article according to claim 6, further comprising:

the input module is used for receiving an opening instruction input by a user to generate an opening signal or receiving a closing instruction input by the user to generate a closing signal;

the microcontroller further configured to:

receiving the opening signal, and controlling the driving module to drive the covering part to move according to the opening signal so that the covering part opens the heating chamber; or

And receiving the closing signal, and controlling the driving module to drive the covering part to move according to the closing signal so as to enable the covering part to cover the heating chamber.

8. The smoking article of claim 6, wherein the microcontroller is further configured to:

and under the condition that no object exists in the heating chamber, controlling the driving module to drive the covering part to move so that the covering part covers the heating chamber.

9. A smoking article according to any one of claims 1-8, wherein said first and second positions are spaced apart in the direction of aerosol flow in said heating chamber, and wherein said first position is downstream in the direction of aerosol flow and said second position is upstream in the direction of aerosol flow.

10. A smoking article according to claim 9, wherein said first and second detection modules are each selected from the group consisting of a variable resistance sensing device, a signal transmitting and receiving means, a mechanical type switching device, a metal spring, a strain sensor, a pressure sensor, an ultrasonic sensor.