JP4613146B2 - Air conditioner and address setting method of air conditioner - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to an air conditioner in which a plurality of indoor units are connected to a single outdoor unit by refrigerant piping, and is suitable for automatically assigning addresses to indoor units.

  In a multi-room air conditioner, in general, a plurality of indoor units are connected to one or more outdoor units, and mutual information is exchanged by transmission. It is necessary to set the address of the indoor unit.

  Traditionally, address setting was manually performed by means such as a dip switch. However, as described in Patent Document 1 or Patent Document 2 for the purpose of omitting setting work and preventing erroneous settings such as address duplication. A means to automatically set the address was devised.

  A method common to these inventions is a method of generating temporary addresses having non-overlapping random values, rearranging them according to a rule such as ascending order, and then replacing them with addresses of consistent numbers within a set range.

Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-91718 JP 2000-28181 A

  In recent multi-room air conditioners, the number of indoor units connected per outdoor unit has increased significantly with the aim of facilitating piping work with the increase in compressor capacity and efficiency. is doing. In order to cope with it, it is necessary to expand the address setting range of indoor units. However, the number of indoor unit models is increasing year by year, and various types of indoor units are used for one outdoor unit. As a result, the indoor unit before the address setting range is expanded and the indoor unit after the expansion are mixedly installed. At this time, if automatic address setting is performed equally without distinguishing between the two, there is a possibility that the address of an indoor unit whose address setting range is not expanded may be erroneously set in the expanded part. It is necessary to distinguish. Also, the expansion of the address setting range has a high probability that the temporary addresses will overlap, and there is a concern that it takes time to determine addresses by repeatedly performing automatic address communication.

  The object of the present invention is to automatically determine that the address setting range is different without manually setting, assigning an address within the address setting range unique to the indoor unit in automatic address setting, and reducing the duplication probability of temporary addresses By doing so, address determination is performed in a short time.

The multi-room air conditioner according to the present invention has a configuration in which an outdoor unit, one unit, and one or more indoor units are connected by a common communication line, and includes a communication unit that communicates with each other. The outdoor unit includes means for detecting duplication of room addresses, means for rearranging the room addresses in ascending or descending order, and means for assigning a consistent number to the temporary address. The indoor unit includes a random value generating means. Here, the indoor unit that expands the address setting range is characterized by the following simple device compared to the indoor unit that does not extend the address setting range for the generated random value.
(1) A random value generated by an indoor unit with an expanded setting range is set to a larger value than a random value generated by an indoor unit with a non-extended setting range, and the ranges are not overlapped.
(2) The range of generated random values is expanded so that there is less duplication of random values.

  ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, possibility that the address of the indoor unit of an air conditioner will be set incorrectly can be reduced, and the reliability of an air conditioner can be improved.

  Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a connection form of a multi-room air conditioner according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the present air conditioning system, one outdoor unit B and 18 indoor units C1, C2 and Cn1 to Cn16 in total are connected by the same refrigerant pipe (not shown) and a common communication line A. To do.

  The maximum number of indoor units that can be connected to the outdoor unit B is obtained by expanding a conventional outdoor unit (not shown), for example, from 10 to 60 units.

  The indoor units C1 and C2 are conventional indoor units, and the address setting range is the same as the connectable number range of the conventional outdoor units, which is 1 to 10. The random value range of these temporary addresses is set to 0 to 255 as a value that makes it difficult to overlap the random values of 10 connected units sufficiently.

The indoor units Cn1 to Cn16 extend the address setting range of the indoor units C1 and C2, and the setting range is 1 to 60 as in the connectable number range of the outdoor unit B. Further, the range of the random value of the temporary address is set to 256 to 65535 as a value that is larger than the random value of the indoor units C1 and C2 and is an expanded range.
Next, the address setting procedure will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 2 is an example of a communication sequence between the outdoor unit B and the indoor units C1, C2, Cn1 to Cn16.
(1) The outdoor unit B transmits an address request message D to all indoor units immediately after power-on. At this time, since the indoor unit address is indefinite, broadcast transmission is performed for all indoor units.
(2) When the indoor units C1, C2, and Cn1 to Cn16 receive the address request message D from the outdoor unit B, they generate random values E1, E2, and En1 to En16 within the range, respectively, and send a response message to the outdoor unit B. Reply to FIG. 3 shows an example of the random value generated by each and the order of reply.
(3) The outdoor unit B waits until response messages are returned from all the indoor units.
(4) When reception from all indoor units is completed, the received temporary addresses E1, E2, En1 to En16 are rearranged in ascending order. If rearranged in ascending order, because of the relationship of (E1 or E2) <En1-16, the temporary addresses E1 and E2 of the indoor units C1 and C2 whose address range is not expanded inevitably come first.

Here, if there is an overlap in the temporary addresses E1, E2, En1 to En16, the process returns to the item (1). Repeat until there are no duplicates. Again, since the range of En1 to En16 is greatly expanded compared to E1 and E2, the probability of overlapping can be minimized.
(5) When there is no duplication, consistent numbers are assigned to the rearranged temporary addresses in order from the smallest temporary address, starting with 1. As described above, since the old indoor unit is first, the consistent number having a smaller value is always assigned first from the old indoor unit, and the old set range is not exceeded. Of course, it is necessary to prohibit connections that exceed the number of old indoor units set to the old number, here ten. 4 rearranges the values of the example of FIG. 3 and assigns serial numbers F1, F2, and Fn1 to Fn16 to temporary addresses.
(5) The outdoor unit B transmits the assigned serial number to each indoor unit. Here, it is assumed that transmission is performed in ascending order of regular addresses. First, the regular address F2 is transmitted using the temporary address E2 as the destination.
(6) Since the other party is E2, the indoor unit C2 recognizes and stores F2 as a normal address for itself.
(7) Thereafter, the regular addresses are sequentially transmitted to the remaining indoor units using the temporary address as the counterpart, and the indoor units store the same.

According to the above-described embodiment of the present invention, in a multi-room air conditioner that generates a temporary address with a random value that does not overlap and sets the address of the indoor unit by replacing it with a consistent number, it can be connected to one outdoor unit. When the indoor address setting range is expanded to increase the number of indoor units,
(1) It is possible to perform automatic address setting by combining an indoor unit whose setting range is not extended and an indoor unit whose setting range is extended in the same outdoor unit.
(2) Even if the number of indoor units connected per outdoor unit is greatly increased, duplication of random values is reduced, and automatic address setting can be completed in a short time.

  Temporary address range generated by an indoor unit already connected to the outdoor unit (address setting range is 1 to 10) and temporary address range generated by the added indoor unit (address setting range is 1 to 60) May be erroneously set by setting an address of 11 or more to an indoor unit already connected to the outdoor unit. However, in the above-described embodiment of the present invention, such an erroneous setting is performed. Can be prevented.

The block diagram which shows one Example of the air conditioner of this invention. The communication sequence figure at the time of address setting. The figure which shows the example of the temporary address arranged in the order of reception of the outdoor unit B. The figure which shows the example which allocated the serial number after rearranging FIG. 3 in an ascending order.

Explanation of symbols

A-communication line, B-outdoor unit, C1, C2-indoor unit (however, conventional address setting range), Cn1-Cn16-indoor unit (however, address setting range is expanded compared to C1, C2), D-temporary Address request, E1, E2-temporary address (however, the old random range), En1 to En16-temporary address (however, the random range according to the present invention), regular address assigned to F1-C1, regularity assigned to F2-C2 Address, Fn1 to Fn16-Regular address assigned to Cn1 to Cn16

Claims (3)

In an air conditioner in which a plurality of indoor units are connected to one outdoor unit by refrigerant piping, and an address on communication of the indoor unit is automatically set.
Wherein each indoor unit generates a random value in a predetermined numerical range, the range of random values each indoor unit is generated, there are at least two, at least two ranges of random values rather overlap, the indoor The air conditioner characterized in that the random values generated by the units are rearranged in ascending or descending order, and the addresses of the indoor units are set according to the rearranged random values . In an air conditioner in which a plurality of indoor units are connected to one outdoor unit by refrigerant piping,
Range of random value added indoor units occurs is already the range of the random values that the indoor units connected to the outdoor unit is generated rather overlap, random values in ascending order or descending order of the indoor units has occurred The air conditioner is characterized in that the addresses of the indoor units are set according to the rearranged random values . In the address setting method for an air conditioner, a plurality of indoor units are connected to one outdoor unit by a refrigerant pipe, and an address on communication of the indoor unit is automatically set.
Each indoor unit has a procedure for generating a random value within a predetermined numerical range;
The range of the random values that each indoor unit is generated, there are at least two, at least two ranges of random values rather overlap, it sorts the random values in ascending or descending order of the indoor unit has occurred, the arranged An address setting method for an air conditioner, wherein the address of the indoor unit is set according to the changed random value .

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