JP2925870B2 - Vending machine lighting equipment - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a fluorescent lamp illuminating device for illuminating a front panel plate from behind in a vending machine.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in a vending machine, in order to make the vending machine stand out with a front panel plate or a product sample, for example, as disclosed in JP-A-4-24790, the inside of the vending machine is internally provided. A fluorescent lamp is provided to illuminate these from inside.

[0003]

In recent years, inverters have been used in lighting devices of vending machines. As is well known, the inverter rectifies the commercial frequency,
Because the fluorescent lamp is lit by high-frequency switching performed by the semiconductor element, setting a high switching frequency not only excels in luminous efficiency, but also allows the ballast to be downsized and is effective in the limited space of vending machines. There is an advantage that can be arranged.

[0004] However, in a vending machine, the illuminating device is always driven, so it is desirable to change the amount of illuminating light according to the surrounding conditions. In view of the above, the present invention provides an illumination device for a vending machine that can perform dimming. By the way, the vending machine communicates with an external hand-held terminal device using infrared light, so that the administrator can collect store data from the vending machine and set data to the vending machine. There are things that can be done. An object of the present invention is to provide a lighting device that does not cause a malfunction in optical communication in such a vending machine.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention relates to an infrared light communication unit for transmitting and receiving data between a vending machine and a handy-type terminal device formed separately. In the vending machine provided with, an oscillation circuit capable of oscillating a frequency wider than the carrier frequency region of the infrared light communication unit is provided, and the oscillation circuit oscillates from a frequency higher than the carrier frequency region at startup. The configuration is such that the frequency is reduced after the start, and an inverter circuit is provided in which the lighting frequency of the fluorescent lamp is set to a plurality of frequencies lower than the carrier frequency range of the infrared light communication unit. .

[0006]

The amount of light of the fluorescent lamp increases or decreases according to the lighting frequency of the inverter circuit. Therefore, if the lighting of the vending machine is to be brightened, a low frequency is selected as the lighting frequency, and if it is desired to be dark, a high frequency is selected as the lighting frequency. Since the lighting frequencies of the inverter circuits are all lower than the carrier frequency of the infrared light communication unit, the infrared light communication unit does not malfunction due to the light of the fluorescent lamp. Then, at the time of starting the lighting of the fluorescent lamp, the oscillation starts from a sufficiently high frequency, so that the fluorescent lamp can be reliably turned on.

[0007]

FIG. 1 shows a vending machine 1 and a hand-held terminal device 2 according to this embodiment. FIG. 2 particularly shows the configuration of a device relating to the control of the lighting device of the vending machine of the present embodiment, and 3 controls all operations of the vending machine 1 including lighting and communication with the terminal device 2. Main control unit, 4
Denotes an infrared light communication unit, 5 denotes an inverter circuit, and 6 denotes a power supply unit.

As shown in FIG. 2, a fluorescent lamp 7 is arranged behind the front service panel of the vending machine 1, and the front customer service panel is illuminated by the fluorescent lamp 7 which is turned on under the control of the inverter circuit 5. Emits light. The front customer service panel is provided with a light transmission hole 8, and the infrared light communication unit 4 communicates with the terminal device 2 through the transmission hole 8 using infrared light.

The terminal device 2 has a keyboard 9 on the operation surface.
And a liquid crystal display 10, and an infrared light communication unit 11 (FIG. 3) is disposed inside. A light transmission hole 12 similar to that of the vending machine 1 is provided at the tip of the terminal device 2, and optical communication can be performed by facing both the transmission holes 8, 12.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the terminal device 2. The terminal device 2 executes a control operation according to a program.
A PU 15 is included as control means, and a memory 17 and an I / O interface 18 are connected to the CPU 15 via a bus line 16. Further, the infrared light communication unit 11 is connected to the CPU 15. And I / O
The keyboard 18 and the liquid crystal display 10 are connected to the interface 18.

FIG. 4 shows the configuration of the transmitting section 26 of the infrared optical communication units 4 and 11, and includes an oscillator 27, a transmission signal input terminal 28, a modulation circuit 29, a driving transistor Tr, and an infrared ray. A light emitting diode 30.
The input terminal 28 is connected to the CPU 15 if the terminal device 2 is used, and is connected to the main control unit 3 if the vending machine 1 is used. Then, the transmission section 26 modulates the data signal a input from the input terminal 28 with the carrier signal b output from the oscillator 27 by the modulation circuit 29, as shown in the operation waveform diagram of FIG. The carrier signal b is a signal having a frequency of 70 KHz, and has an on / off ratio of about 1 to 1 and is a pulse signal sufficiently faster than the communication speed of transmission data. Then, the signal c modulated by the carrier signal b is supplied to the base of the drive transistor Tr to drive the light emitting diode 30 to transmit data.

FIG. 6 shows the configuration of the receiving section 31 of the infrared communication units 4 and 11, and the infrared photodiode 3
2 is connected to the output terminal of the DC power supply circuit 33, the anode is connected to one end of a primary coil of the coupling transformer 38, and the other end of the primary coil is grounded.
A capacitor C is connected between the terminals of the secondary coil and is tuned to the frequency of the carrier signal b. Also,
One end of the secondary coil is connected to the amplifier circuit 34 and the other end is connected to the output terminal of the DC power supply circuit 33. The DC power supply circuit 33 includes an electrolytic capacitor 35 for stabilizing the power supply, divides the power supply voltage V by the resistors R ₁ and R _2, and supplies the bias voltage of the photodiode 32 from its output terminal. The amplifying circuit 34 performs the functions of amplification, detection and shaping, and its output side is a delay circuit 36.
Is connected to the output terminal 37 via the. The output terminal 37 is connected to the CPU 15 if the terminal device 2 is used, and is connected to the main control unit 3 if the vending machine 1 is used.

When an optical signal is input to the receiving section 31, a photocurrent signal d (FIG. 5) corresponding to the intensity of the input light flows through the primary coil of the transformer 3 by the operation of the photodiode 32, and the secondary current flows through the secondary coil. Introduces into the amplifier circuit 2 only the frequency components determined by L and C from among the voltage changes. Accordingly, since the frequency is tuned to the modulation frequency by L and C, the frequency band to be passed can be narrowed, and there is no influence of noise due to disturbance light. The signal e amplified, detected and shaped by the amplifier circuit 2 is delayed.
After the rising is delayed by the circuit 36, the inverted signal is inverted by the inverter 38 and output from the output terminal 37.
The purpose of this delay is to make the signal closer to the signal on the transmitting side by delaying at the rising part because a delay occurs at the falling part when the signal is waveform-shaped.

In the transmitting section 26, even if excessive light is received by the photodiode 32, for example, by approaching the receiving section 31, the excessive voltage generated thereby is divided by the resistors R ₁ and R ₂ and cut. . As a result, the peak value of the input voltage is fixed, so that the operating point of the photodiode 32 is kept constant.

FIG. 7 shows the configuration of the inverter circuit 5, which comprises a transformer 20, a frequency modulation circuit 12, a dimming control circuit 13, and an output circuit 14. The frequency modulation circuit 12 transforms the power supply voltage supplied from the power supply section 6 with the transformer 20 and supplies the voltage to the filament of the fluorescent lamp 7 through the rectification / smoothing circuit 21 and the output circuit 14. on the other hand,
The rectifying / smoothing circuit 21 rectifies the output and applies the rectified output to a smoothing capacitor provided therein to smooth the output to a DC voltage. Subsequently, the oscillation circuit 22 performs an oscillating operation with the DC voltage.
Output circuit 1 for outputting a frequency signal in the range of 100 Hz to 100 kHz.
4 for driving the fluorescent lamp 7 by driving the transistor circuit of the output circuit 14 to generate an AC voltage. As shown in FIG.
Starts oscillating at 100 KHz, and then gradually lowers the frequency. When the oscillating frequency passes through the resonance point of the fluorescent lamp 7 tube, the voltage at both ends of the tube increases, and the fluorescent lamp 7 lights up. Thereafter, the voltage across the tube becomes steady.

In the vending machine having the above configuration, the communication frequency of the infrared light communication units 4 and 11 is set to 70 KHz, so that the lighting frequency of the fluorescent lamp 7 is set to 40 KHz.
Hz and 62 kHz. When the lighting frequency is 40 KHz, the normal lighting is bright (A in FIG. 8), and when the lighting frequency is 62 kHz, the light is dimmed (B in FIG. 8). This switching can be performed by a control signal of the main control unit 3. That is, the main control section 3 has a built-in clock circuit, and outputs a control signal to the dimming control circuit 13 through the OR circuit 24 so that the dimming is turned on in a time zone when the number of people around the vending machine 1 is low. Then, under the control of the dimming control circuit 13, the inverter circuit 5 sets the main oscillation frequency of the oscillation circuit 22 to 6
Lighting at the time of dimming is performed by switching to 2 kHz. In addition, when the changeover switch 21 provided outside is operated, the lighting frequency is set to 62 k.
Hz can be selected, whereby the fluorescent lamp 7 can be dimmed independently of the control of the main control unit 3.

Since the lighting frequency in both the normal lighting and the dimming lighting is different from the communication frequency of the infrared light communication units 4 and 11, the vending machine 1 and the terminal device 2 communicate with each other by the infrared light. Even if communication is performed through the communication units 4 and 11, no malfunction is caused by the light of the fluorescent lamp 7. Further, the inverter circuit 5 periodically increases the frequency to the short-time lighting frequency, specifically, from 40 kHz to 62 kHz during the normal lighting B as shown in FIG. Is to be prevented. In this case, the oscillation circuit 22 periodically changes the frequency to 40 KHz and 62 KHz.
It includes a switching circuit for switching between kHz and kHz.

Since the dimming lighting A is always in the lighting frequency range at the time of starting, there is no need to periodically change the frequency in this way. In this example, the oscillation circuit 22 is provided with the above switching circuit. For this reason, the frequency is periodically switched from 62 kHz to 40 KHz even during the dimming lighting A. However, frequency switching in the case of dimming lighting has no particular operational significance.

[0019]

As described in detail above, according to the lighting device for a vending machine of the present invention, dimming can be performed by the inverter circuit without adversely affecting data transmission / reception with the terminal device. . Further, even if the frequency is periodically raised and lowered to prevent the disappearance, the frequency is raised and lowered in a region lower than the carrier frequency region of the infrared communication unit, so that there is no adverse effect on data transmission and reception. Furthermore, since the oscillation starts from a sufficiently high frequency at the start of lighting of the fluorescent lamp, the fluorescent lamp can be reliably turned on.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of a vending machine and a terminal device.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the appearance of a vending machine and a terminal device.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a terminal device.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a transmission unit of the infrared light communication unit.

FIG. 5 is an operation waveform diagram of the infrared light communication unit.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a receiving unit of the infrared light communication unit.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a configuration of an inverter circuit.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing changes in the respective oscillation frequencies at the time of startup during normal lighting and dimming lighting, and changes in the voltage across the fluorescent lamp tube at that time.

FIG. 9 is a waveform chart for explaining an operation of preventing disappearance.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Vending machine 2 Terminal device 4 Infrared light communication unit 5 Inverter circuit 7 Fluorescent light 11 Infrared light communication unit

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuation of the front page (56) References JP-A-3-167689 (JP, A) JP-A-58-50837 (JP, A) JP-A-3-269789 (JP, A) (58) Field (Int.Cl. ⁶ , DB name) G07F 9/02 104

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A vending machine provided with an infrared light communication unit for transmitting and receiving data between a vending machine and a handy type terminal device separately provided, wherein the infrared light communication unit is transported. Wider range than frequency domain
An oscillation circuit capable of oscillating a frequency of
Oscillates from a frequency higher than the carrier frequency range during operation.
It is configured to start and then decrease the frequency
In addition, the lighting frequency of the fluorescent lamp is
A lighting device for a vending machine, comprising an inverter circuit set to a plurality of frequencies in a region lower than a transmission frequency region .