JP2012244508A - Device information discrimination device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a device information discrimination device which has a function of sounding notice contents for state notice, an operation request, etc., discriminatingly with different tone colors, the device information discrimination device being characterized in that a sound generated by the device is detected to discriminate the notice contents of the device from a tone color thereof.SOLUTION: A spectrum of a signal component of the sound that the device generates is extracted. A reference spectrum for collation made to a device state is registered in advance. Alarm information sounded by the device and contents that the device requests are discriminated in a method of collating features of spectrum distributions of the both. A band-pass filter is provided so as to remove noise received from environment. A maintenance function is also provided together so as to easily set sounds which are different by devices to be discriminated.

Description

There are many electrical devices and mechanical devices (hereinafter referred to as devices) around us. Some of these apparatuses have a function of generating a sound for requesting a user to generate an abnormality or perform a specific operation.
The present invention extracts the information that the device intends to notify in the form of digital data by using a ringing sound that these devices originally emit for the purpose of notification of simple information for the operator, and is intended for other devices. The present invention relates to a method for notifying device information to a device.

Devices that perform certain functions by operations such as electricity and machines are currently used in many situations in society. It is used as an indispensable tool to support daily life and business activities in many fields including daily life at home and industry. In many cases, a method of causing a specific tone color to sound is given to these devices in order to notify the user of the state and the like. In other words, a device that performs a certain function in the operation of these electricity or machine is prepared in advance with a plurality of timbres corresponding to the content to be transmitted, and by specifying one of these timbres and ringing, It is designed to notify users.

For example, in order to notify the user of a minor failure, a light sound is emitted, but in order to notify the occurrence of a serious failure, a mellow sound that reminds of a serious failure is generated. It is done.
On the other hand, these devices are originally intended for each device to send notification information independently, and are intended for each device to notify by sound, but depending on the environment used. May want to centralize and monitor multiple devices. For example, there may be a case where a dedicated device for integrated management is provided at a site where a plurality of devices coexist, or a case where a device for integrated management is provided in a remote place via a communication network that distributes information over a wide area called an IP network.

However, many devices that are already in use have a function for notifying the user of the state with sound, but many do not have a notification function for other dedicated management devices or devices connected to the IP network.
There is a need for a method that enables connection to other devices and devices connected to an IP network with a simple mechanism while effectively utilizing an existing ringing device. On the other hand, the information indicating the device status is reported to the user of the device with a tone sound that can be heard with the ear. For this reason, here, there is a demand for a mechanism that specifies the state of the device from the tone color of the sound produced by the device and notifies the data to other devices. In addition, since there are already a variety of devices that emit ringing sounds, there is a need for a mechanism that can easily associate a specific device state with the ringing sound by a simple method.

Japanese Patent Application No. 2006-242176 Japanese Patent Application No. 2005-350032

A method for discriminating a ringing sound is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Nos. 2006-242176 and 2005-350032. This is based on the presence or absence of one or two specific frequency components in the ringing sound. This is a method for discriminating. However, this method has the following problems.
The first method is to determine the presence or absence of a specific frequency to be determined, and to determine the sound produced by a large number of unspecified devices having sounds composed of frequency components that are not targeted by the device to be determined. It means that it cannot be targeted.
Second, since the disclosed invention has a function of detecting the frequency to be discriminated in advance, the versatility is poor and the convenience is remarkably lacking. It can be said that it is not suitable for the purpose of putting into practice a mechanism for discriminating an unspecified number of ringing sounds by a simple method.

Third, the disclosed invention is a method for detecting and discriminating two types of frequencies. Usually, there are many ringing sounds of a device composed of three or more types of frequency components. Cannot make a determination. Although it is possible to take measures by increasing the number of discriminating circuits, the circuit becomes more complicated and impractical.
There is a demand for a method for providing a mechanism for discriminating sounds generated by an unspecified number of devices by a versatile method.
For this purpose, there are the following problems.
The first problem is to specify the device state that the device is to promptly notify from the characteristics of the ringing sound. That is, a specific ringing sound signal emitted by the device can be collated, for example, converted into digital data, and a method for quickly specifying the device state from the features appearing in this data is shown.

The second problem is to show a method for distinguishing and distinguishing ringing sound data emitted by the apparatus. In other words, other devices are often installed in the environment where the devices are installed, and here, sounds emitted by the other devices are also captured. There are also sound signals derived from the power supply of the device itself. This is what is called noise. For this reason, the realization method for taking out the characteristic of the ringing sound of an object apparatus distinctly from a noise sound becomes a subject.
The third problem is to provide a mechanism capable of easily discriminating many types of ringing sounds by a versatile method.

In order to solve the first problem described above, an arithmetic processing method (hereinafter referred to as FFT calculation) by Fourier transform that is performed for normal signal analysis in order to convert the ringing sound to be captured into data that can be collated. Utilizing this method, a method for extracting frequency components constituting the ringing sound signal is taken. The component indicating the characteristics of the sound produced by the device is normally composed of a sine wave of about 0 Hz to 2 kHz, but the frequency is not limited in the present invention. Here, for the sake of convenience, the frequency component values are calculated for each fixed frequency, taking 0 Hz to 2 kHz as an example. For example, if it takes every 20 Hz, 100 frequency components are obtained. A frequency component is shown on the horizontal axis, and a frequency component value constituting a ringing sound is shown on the vertical axis, and each frequency component shown in a graph is called a spectrum.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a spectrum obtained by performing FFT calculation on the ringing sound of the apparatus. In this example, a result obtained by performing an FFT operation on a sound signal when one type of sound rings continuously or intermittently repeats is shown. This is an example in the case of ringing continuously or in the case of ringing like a beep.
Among the ringing sounds of the device, there are those that try to attract the attention of the operator of the device more strongly by repeatedly ringing a plurality of types of sounds having different timbres. This is the case where a plurality of different sounds are sounded continuously or intermittently like a peep. FIG. 5 shows an example of results obtained by subjecting two types of sound signals to FFT processing on each.

In the present invention, a plurality of sets of ringing sound types and spectra serving as a reference are stored in advance (hereinafter referred to as reference data). In this state, the sound to be retrieved from the device is subjected to FFT processing, and the number of types and the characteristics of the spectrum component distribution state for each type are collated with the reference data stored in advance, so that the sound to be collated is either It is determined whether or not it is similar to the reference data.
In order to solve the second problem, a method of limiting the band data constituting the spectrum of the ringing sound emitted by the apparatus is adopted. That is, it is easy to distinguish the characteristics of the ringing sound by applying a process of increasing the value of the band that strongly expresses the characteristics of the ringing sound emitted by the device and decreasing the value of the other band. For example, if the coefficient of the frequency band of noise composed of a frequency band different from the characteristic of the ringing sound is set to zero percent and the frequency band representing the characteristic of the ringing sound is set to 100%, the sound of the ringing sound is not affected by the noise. Feature discrimination processing can be performed correctly.
Here, an individual filtering coefficient is provided for each frequency component, and a new spectrum is generated by a method of adding up to each frequency component value of the calculation result of the high-speed FFT, and discrimination processing is performed using this.

In order to solve the third problem, a mechanism is provided for storing spectrum data serving as a criterion for discrimination. Here, a maintenance function is built into a notebook personal computer, for example, with an easy-to-carry computer, and this is connected to a device sound discriminating device, and the sound obtained by performing an FFT operation on the sound signal input to the device sound discriminating device. A function of registering the number of types and its spectrum as reference data number provided for discrimination and its reference data, and a function of registering settings for easily filtering arbitrary frequency components are provided.

According to the first aspect of the present invention, by using the sounding function provided to convey the device state to the operator according to the first aspect of the invention, the device state is converted from the tone of the sound to the data format. It is possible to notify the information processing apparatus or the like.
According to the second aspect of the present invention, according to the second aspect of the present invention, there is a case where noise received from another device provided in the installation environment is mixed with a sound signal provided for transmitting the device state to the operator. However, it is possible to correctly extract the device status in the form of data from the timbre of the sound emitted to convey the device status.
According to the third aspect of the present invention, according to the third aspect of the present invention, the device state is expressed in the form of data from the tone color of the sound emitted to convey the device state by an easy operation for the sound related to an arbitrary device. It can be taken out.

Hereinafter, embodiments of an apparatus state determination apparatus and apparatus state determination method of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. However, the scope of the present invention is not limited to the specific application, shape, number and the like shown in the following examples.

An apparatus state determination apparatus according to the first aspect of the present invention corresponds to claim 1. Claim 1 will be described with reference to the block diagram of the apparatus state discriminating apparatus shown in FIG. 1 in order to solve the first problem.
In the configuration example shown in FIG. 1, the equipment state determination device (10) includes a sound signal input unit (11), an FFT processing unit (12), a spectrum (13), a determination unit (14), an output unit (15), and reference data. A storage unit (16) is provided.
The sound signal input unit (11) receives a sound signal notified from a device that sounds. The sound to be notified may be a signal notified from a microphone or the like.

The input sound signal is subjected to analog-to-digital conversion, notified to the FFT processing unit (12), and subjected to Fourier transform processing. As a result, frequency component values constituting the input sound signal are calculated, and a spectrum (13) indicating the distribution of the constituent frequency elements is generated. The determination unit collates spectrum data similar to the spectrum (13) generated from the data registered in the reference data storage unit (16) in which the spectrum data is stored in pairs with the identification information in advance, and the matching data And the identification information is notified to the output unit (15). In the output unit (15), in order to notify the identification information to other information processing apparatus or the like, it is output by a method such as an Ethernet packet or a method of notifying by a contact output operation utilizing contact opening / closing. A method using so-called serial communication called RS232C or RS485 communication method is also conceivable, but the method is not particularly limited here.

An apparatus state determination apparatus according to the second aspect of the present invention corresponds to claim 2. Claim 2 will be described with reference to the block diagram of the apparatus state discriminating apparatus shown in FIG. 2 in order to solve the second problem. In FIG. 2, a filtering coefficient data storage unit (21) is newly added based on FIG.
The configuration shown in FIG. 2 is a configuration in which a filtering data storage unit (21) is added based on the configuration in FIG.

The sound signal input to the sound signal input unit (11) is subjected to analog-digital conversion, notified to the FFT processing unit (12), and subjected to Fourier transform processing. As a result, the component value of the frequency constituting the input sound signal is calculated, and a spectrum (13) indicating the distribution of the constituent frequency elements is generated. The determination unit first adds the coefficients of the filtering data storage unit (21) set for each frequency component to each frequency component indicating the corresponding generated spectrum, generates a spectrum after filtering processing, and identifies it in advance. Spectrum data similar to the spectrum (13) generated from the data registered in the reference data storage unit (16) where the spectrum data is stored in pairs with the information is collated, and the matching data is extracted, The identification information is notified to the output unit (15).

In order to notify the other information processing apparatus of the identification code notified by the output unit (15), it is output by a method such as an Ethernet packet or a contact output method utilizing opening and closing of contacts. A method using so-called serial communication called RS232C or RS485 communication method is also conceivable, but the method is not particularly limited here.

  An apparatus state determination apparatus according to the third aspect of the present invention corresponds to claim 3. Claim 3 will be described with reference to the block diagram of the apparatus state discriminating apparatus shown in FIG. 3 in order to solve the third problem. FIG. 3 is a diagram in which a data registration function (31) is newly added to the device state determination device (20) based on FIG. 2, and a maintenance device (32) having a maintenance unit (33) is also provided. The maintenance unit (33) has a function of notifying the data registration function (31) of spectrum data and filtering data in addition to a function of interacting with the setting operator.

First, a function for registering sound data as a reference for collation in the spectrum data storage unit will be described. When a sound signal set and registered as a reference for collation is input to the signal input unit (11), analog-digital conversion is performed and notified to the FFT processing unit (12), and Fourier transform processing is performed. As a result, the component value for each frequency constituting the input sound signal is calculated, and a spectrum (13) indicating the distribution of the constituent frequency elements is generated. This result is notified to the maintenance unit (33) of the maintenance device (32), and through the dialogue with the setting member, an identification code is given and a registration instruction is sent to the data registration function (31). Remembered.

Next, a function of registering filtering data in the filtering data storage unit will be described. Also in this case, the maintenance unit (33) determines an attenuation coefficient of an arbitrary frequency component through dialogue with a setting member, notifies the data registration function, and stores it in the filtering coefficient data storage unit (21).
Along with the data in the filtering data storage unit (21), after filtering the data previously registered in the spectrum data storage unit (16) together with the identification code to remove noise components, the generated spectrum (13) Among them, data similar to registration is extracted. The identification code is notified to the output unit (15). In the output unit (15), in order to notify the other apparatus of the identification code, the output is performed by a method such as an Ethernet packet or a contact output method using opening / closing of contacts. A method using a so-called serial communication method called RS232C or RS485 communication method is also conceivable, but is not particularly limited here.
In addition, the structure which does not have a filtering data storage part in the structure shown in FIG. 3 can also be considered easily.

  For various devices that sound alarms and request operations, provide notification information generated by the device in a place where the sound generated by the device does not reach via communication means such as the Internet or Intranet Depending on the method of notifying the monitoring device, a method for managing the status of the device can be considered.

The figure which shows the structure of aspect 1 of this invention The figure which shows the structure of aspect 2 of this invention The figure which shows the structure of aspect 3 of this invention Spectrum of ringing sound signal example 1 Spectrum of ringing sound signal example 2 Spectrum example of ringing sound signal example 1 where noise is superimposed Spectrum example of ringing sound signal example 2 where noise is superimposed Setting example of filterin value

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 Apparatus state determination apparatus 11 Sound signal input part 12 FFT processing part 13 Spectrum calculation data 14 Determination part 15 Output part 16 Spectrum data storage part 20 Apparatus state determination apparatus 21 in aspect 2 Filtering data storage part 30 Apparatus state determination apparatus in aspect 3 31 Data Registration Function 32 Maintenance Device 33 Maintenance Unit 41 Frequency Notation Axis 42 Input Value Notation Axis 43 Spectrum Distribution of Ringing Sound Signal Example 1 Spectrum Distribution of Ringing Sound Signal Example 2 61 Spectrum Distribution of Ringing Sound Signal Example 1 with Noise Overlaid Example 71 Example of spectrum distribution of ringing sound signal example 2 on which noise is superimposed 81 Display example of setting of filterlin value

Claims (4)

In a sound signal discriminating device having a sound signal input function and a sound signal spectrum calculating function, a function of storing spectrum data indicating characteristics of a plurality of sound signals together with sound signal identification information, and a function of notifying other devices. A method for collating the spectrum calculation result of the sound signal with a plurality of stored spectrum data and notifying other device of the identification information of the sound signal on condition that it is similar to one characteristic of the sound signal spectrum data A device information discriminating method characterized by having a function. Sound signal discrimination function with sound signal input function and sound signal spectrum calculation function, function to store spectrum data showing the characteristics of multiple sound signals together with sound signal identification information, function to notify other devices and spectrum filtering function In the apparatus, a method for collating a spectrum calculation result of an input sound signal with a plurality of spectrum data to be stored and identifying the sound signal on the condition that it is similar to one characteristic of the sound signal spectrum data A device information determination method characterized by having a function of notifying other devices of information.
Sound signal discrimination function with sound signal input function and sound signal spectrum calculation function, function to store spectrum data showing the characteristics of multiple sound signals together with sound signal identification information, function to notify other devices and spectrum filtering function In the apparatus composed of the apparatus and the maintenance apparatus having the maintenance unit, the spectrum calculation result of the input sound signal is subjected to filtering processing using the filtering data stored by the data registration function, and a plurality of data stored by the data registration function is stored. Device information discrimination, having a function of notifying other devices of identification information of the sound signal on the condition that it is similar to one feature of the sound signal spectrum data. Method.
Apparatus information discriminating apparatus using the method according to claims 1 to 3