JP2006071255A - Microwave device and its using method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a microwave device and its using method, capable of heating food with simple operational procedure. <P>SOLUTION: This microwave device 1 has a main body 11, a door 12, a control panel 13, a storage unit 10 and a data access device 2. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention generally relates to a microwave device and a method of using the microwave device, and more particularly, is encoded on a target object to be heated without manually inputting heating conditions into the microwave device. The present invention relates to a microwave device that can read out data and a method of using the microwave device.

  According to the encoded data read by the microwave device, the microwave device can automatically start and perform the required heating operation.

  Microwave devices (e.g., microwave ovens) can rapidly heat food, making microwave devices one of the essential electrical devices in our daily lives. Especially in this fast-paced modern society, people often do not have time to cook on their own. For this reason, instead of restaurant meals, people can easily find various processed foods that can be cooked in a microwave device at a convenience store. Consumers of this type of processed food can easily enjoy warm food by using a microwave device to heat the food at a convenience store.

  Different types of foods have different heating time and heating power requirements, so people will have the appropriate heating time and heating power required for microwave equipment to perform the heating operation of each food according to their experience. Must be set to

  If the heating time and heating power required for the microwave device to perform the heating operation are not set appropriately, the heated food will easily overheat or underheat, deteriorating the taste of the food. .

  By investigating all of the commercially available microwave devices, especially microwave devices located in convenience stores and supermarkets, all heating conditions are set in the microwave device using the input device.

  FIG. 5 is a perspective view showing a conventional microwave device.

  As shown in FIG. 5, the input device can be a number of rotary knobs or a number of buttons for inputting heating time and heating power to the microwave device.

  Users can always find a label on the processed food that represents the recommended heating conditions to enter, but they must also enter these heating conditions by hand and press the start button by hand, which is very inconvenient. It is troublesome.

  Therefore, many commodities that require similar heating conditions are categorized in the same category so that convenience store consumers can easily and quickly enter heating conditions into the microwave device.

  This type of input mechanism of pressing one hot key can slightly improve the disadvantages of the traditional method of entering all heating conditions, but still find the category label printed on each package. , You need to press the hot key corresponding to the category. And then the user needs to press the start key to start the heating operation.

  Such an input mechanism still does not provide a fast input mechanism that does not require searching for heating conditions or requiring key presses.

  Furthermore, the use of microwave devices relies solely on the control of input devices located in the microwave device. However, such mechanical or electrical input devices always have a lifetime. Basically, the lifetime of an input device, such as an electrical input device, is defined as the number of times the input device has been pressed or operated.

  Convenience store microwave devices often have a very large number of daily input operations, which can easily damage the microwave device and shorten its life.

  Accordingly, there is a need for a microwave device that can improve the conventional input mechanism that mechanically or electrically inputs heating conditions.

  An object of this invention is to provide the microwave apparatus which can reduce the troublesomeness which inputs a heating condition into the conventional microwave apparatus manually.

  The present invention also provides a microwave device that can automatically read the encoded heating conditions and begin the heating operation without physically contacting the microwave device. Objective.

  The invention further reads the encoded heating conditions affixed to the package of the object to be heated, and converts the encoded data into a signal that can control the heating operation of the microwave device. An object of the present invention is to provide a microwave device capable of conversion.

  The microwave device according to the present invention that achieves the above object includes a main body, a door, a control panel, a storage device, and a data access device.

  By encoding and pasting the optimized heating conditions on the package of food to be heated, the user can use the data access device of the microwave device to read the heating conditions on the package.

  Therefore, the food can be heated to its highest quality.

  In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the data access device can be a bar code reader.

  In an embodiment of the present invention, the data access wave device can be located inside or outside the body of the microwave device.

  The user can input heating conditions via the data access device without manually pressing a button provided on the microwave device.

The data access device can further be connected to the main body through a transmission line, whereby the data access device can be located remotely from the main body of the microwave device.

  The features and technical contents of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. However, the attached drawings are used for illustration and description only, and do not limit the present invention.

  FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing a microwave device according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a partial exploded view showing the microwave device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

  As illustrated, the microwave device 1 includes a main body 11, a door 12, and a control panel 13.

  The main body 11 has a hollow chamber in which an object to be heated can be placed. The object to be heated is generally food. The door 12 and the control panel 13 are disposed in the front portion of the main body 11. The door 12 is provided for the user to place the food to be heated in the hollow chamber of the main body 11. The control panel 13 includes a plurality of input buttons 14 and the data access device 2. The input button 14 is provided so that a user of the microwave device 1 can input heating conditions to the microwave device 1, and the data access device 2 is encoded and printed on a package of food to be heated. It is provided to read the heating conditions.

  The control panel 13 has a storage device having a manual storage device and a read storage device. The manual storage device can store data input from the input button 14 of the control panel 13. On the other hand, the read storage device can store data read from the data access device 2 and data from the input button 14 of the control panel 13.

  By using the storage device, a plurality of heating conditions are set and stored in the storage device in order to appropriately heat a specific type of food. The heating conditions are often optimized heating conditions, such as a specific heating time and heating power for a specific type of food. Thus, when the data access device 2 reads the data encoded on the package of food to be heated, the stored heating conditions are read and the read heating conditions, eg heating time and heating, are read. According to the force, the food is heated.

  The data access device 2 is mainly used for inputting heating conditions to the microwave device 1. The data access device 2 installed on the microwave device 1 can easily read the heating condition from the encoded data of the food without contact with the food package.

  As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the data access device 2 is arranged inside the main body 11 or the control panel 13 and can read the encoded data attached to the food to be heated. .

  FIG. 3 illustrates a microwave device 1 according to another embodiment of the present invention. As shown in the figure, the data access device 2 is installed outside the main body 11 of the microwave device 1.

  That is, the data access device 2 of this embodiment is disposed on the outer surface of the main body 11.

  The data access device 2 arranged outside can be further connected to the main body 11 of the microwave device 1 via a transmission line. That is, the data access device 2 can be arranged away from the microwave device 1 by using a transmission line in order to extend the space range to which the data access device 2 can be applied.

  This design is particularly useful for heating objects that must be kept upright.

  In one particular embodiment, the data access device 2 can be a barcode reader, and the encoded data printed on the package of food to be heated can be a barcode, such as a UPC barcode, EAN barcode, two-dimensional barcode, etc. However, the data access device 2 is not limited to a barcode reader, and the encoded data is not limited to a barcode.

  The encoded data has optimized heating conditions to heat a specific food product. In other words, heating conditions suitable for heating a particular type of food are affixed onto the food packaging.

  The encoded data is preferably printed somewhere on the package that is easily recognized by the consumer. Accordingly, the user can easily bring the encoded data attached to the package of the food to be heated up to the data access device 2.

  The data access device 2 then reads the encoded data and activates the microwave device 1 to perform the requested heating operation.

  Next, a method for using the microwave device 1 will be described.

  FIG. 4 illustrates a process flow diagram of a method for using the microwave device 1. The method for using the microwave device 1 includes the following steps.

  First, the microwave device 1 is connected to an external power source. The storage device 10 is empty and waiting for data input. The user can use the input button 14 or the data access device 2 to enter and set the default type of heating condition in the manual storage device and the read storage device.

  As shown in FIGS. 1 to 4, the microwave device 1 according to the embodiment of the present invention has 10 sets of heating conditions stored in the manual storage device and 50 sets of heating conditions stored in the read storage device. is doing.

  The number of sets of heating conditions described above is shown for illustrative purposes only and is not so limited. The user can also use the input button 14 to release the storage device and change the stored heating conditions. The stored heating conditions can be modified or replaced in this way.

  After the above setting and storing steps are completed, the microwave device 1 is ready for use.

If the user wants to heat the object using the microwave device 1, the user simply positions the encoded data affixed to the package of the object. By bringing the encoded data to the data access device 2, the microwave device 1 can read the encoded data, and the data is stored in a storage device in advance, for example, heating conditions. It can be converted into heating time and heating power. Next, the user can open the door 12 of the microwave device 1, place the object to be heated into the hollow chamber of the microwave device 1, and close the door 12.

  Thereafter, the microwave device 1 starts a heating operation in accordance with the heating conditions read from the encoded data.

  The present invention is capable of many other modifications and improvements by those having ordinary skill in the art, and the present invention should be construed by the appended claims.

  Therefore, the present invention can be variously modified within the scope of the claims without departing from the basic technical idea of the present invention.

It is a perspective view showing a microwave device concerning an embodiment of the present invention. 1 is a partial exploded view showing a microwave device according to an embodiment of the present invention. It is a perspective view which shows the microwave apparatus which concerns on other embodiment of this invention. It is a process flow diagram showing how to use the microwave device according to the present invention. It is a perspective view which shows the conventional microwave apparatus.

Explanation of symbols

1 microwave device,
2 data access devices,
10 storage device,
11 body,
12 doors,
13 Control panel,
14 Input button.

Claims (12)

A body having a hollow chamber for placing an object to be heated;
A door provided in the main body in order to put the object into and out of the hollow chamber of the main body;
A control panel provided in the main body and having a storage device and an input device electrically connected to the storage device;
And a data access device electrically connected to the storage device of the control panel.   The microwave device according to claim 1, wherein the data access device has a barcode reader.   The microwave device according to claim 1, wherein the data access device is disposed in the main body in proximity to the control panel.   The microwave device according to claim 1, wherein the data access device is disposed outside the main body.   The microwave device according to claim 1, wherein the data access device is connected to the main body via a transmission line. The storage device has a manual storage device and a read storage device,
The manual storage device stores a plurality of heating conditions set by an input device,
The microwave device according to claim 1, wherein the reading storage device stores a plurality of heating conditions read by the data access device.   The microwave device according to claim 6, wherein the heating condition includes a heating time and a heating power.   The microwave device according to claim 1, wherein the input device of the control panel has a plurality of input buttons.   The microwave device according to claim 1, wherein the door and the control panel are arranged in a front portion of the main body. (A) bringing the object to be heated, on which the encoded data is pasted, close to the data access device;
(B) reading the encoded data on the object to be heated;
(C) converting the encoded data into heating conditions;
(D) positioning the object to be heated in the hollow chamber of the microwave device;
(E) A method of using a microwave device comprising: heating an object to be heated according to the heating condition.   The method for using the microwave device according to claim 10, further comprising a step of setting a plurality of default heating conditions in the storage device before the step (a). The step (d)
(D1) opening the door of the microwave device;
(D2) positioning an object in the microwave device;
The method for using the microwave device according to claim 10, further comprising: (d3) closing the door of the microwave device.

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