JP7213625B2 - Server device, home appliance monitoring system, home appliance monitoring method, and home appliance monitoring program - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to a server device, a home appliance monitoring system, a home appliance monitoring method, and a home appliance monitoring program for monitoring home appliances.

A system has been proposed in which monitoring target information indicating the status of a device is collected via a communication path and the device is monitored. In such a system, it is important to detect an abnormality at an early stage when the state of equipment changes, and to reduce the amount of communication in order to avoid congestion in the communication path.

In patent document 1, in monitoring a working machine, the transmission interval at which information about the working machine collected inside the working machine is transmitted to an external abnormality determination processing means via a communication path is set to Techniques for modifying based on probabilities are disclosed. Here, the probability of occurrence of an abnormality in the work machine is predetermined according to the operating time of the work machine. According to the technology disclosed in Patent Literature 1, the transmission interval is lengthened as the probability of occurrence of an abnormality in the work machine is decreased to reduce the amount of communication, and the transmission interval is increased as the probability of occurrence of an abnormality in the work machine is increased. Abnormalities can be detected at an early stage by shortening the period.

JP 2012-149510 A

However, according to the technique disclosed in Patent Document 1, it is assumed that the longer the operation time of the work machine is, the higher the probability of occurrence of an abnormality in the work machine is. can't For this reason, there have been cases where it is not possible to detect the occurrence of an abnormality at an early stage, or the amount of communication increases unnecessarily. When it is attempted to obtain the probability of occurrence of an abnormality with higher accuracy, the processing load for obtaining the probability of occurrence of an abnormality increases, and the usage of hardware resources of the monitoring target device increases. In this case, there is a problem that it cannot be implemented when a device with limited hardware resources, such as a home appliance, is to be monitored.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above, and detects an abnormality in a home appliance at an early stage while reducing the amount of communication even when a home appliance with limited hardware resources is monitored. An object of the present invention is to obtain a server device capable of

In order to solve the above-described problems and achieve the object, a server device according to the present invention transmits a request message requesting monitoring target information indicating the state of the home appliance to the home appliance, and receives the monitoring target information from the home appliance. Based on the device information collecting unit that collects and the collected monitoring target information, candidates for the state of the home appliance out of three or more state candidates indicating the degree of failure possibility of the home appliance are selected. a state determination unit that performs determination based on a plurality of criteria provided for each combination of two adjacent candidates when arranged in order of degree of failure possibility, and outputs a determination result indicating the degree of failure possibility; a transmission interval determination unit that determines an interval for transmitting the request message so that the interval at which the device information collection unit transmits the request message to the home appliance becomes longer as the degree of failure possibility indicated by the result becomes lower.

Advantageous Effects of Invention According to the present invention, even when a home appliance with limited hardware resources is targeted for monitoring, it is possible to reduce the amount of communication and quickly detect an abnormality in the home appliance. Play.

1 is a diagram showing the configuration of a home appliance monitoring system according to an embodiment of the present invention; FIG. A diagram showing the configuration of an air conditioner, which is an example of the home appliance shown in FIG. A diagram showing an example of changes in room temperature of the air conditioner shown in FIG. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the functional configuration of the server device shown in FIG. 1; A diagram showing an example of the device attribute information table shown in FIG. A diagram showing an example of the monitoring target information table shown in FIG. A diagram showing an example of the state determination information table shown in FIG. Flowchart showing an example of the operation of the server device shown in FIG. FIG. 2 is a sequence diagram showing an operation example of the home appliance monitoring system shown in FIG. 1; 4 is a diagram showing the configuration of a control circuit for realizing the functions of the server device shown in FIG. 3; FIG.

A server device, a home appliance monitoring system, a home appliance monitoring method, and a home appliance monitoring program according to embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. In addition, this invention is not limited by this embodiment.

Embodiment.
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of a home appliance monitoring system 1 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The home appliance monitoring system 1 has a server device 10 and home appliances 20-1 to 20-n connectable to the server device 10. FIG. Hereinafter, the plurality of home appliances 20-1 to 20-n will be referred to as home appliances 20 when they are not distinguished from each other.

The server device 10 can be connected to a plurality of home appliances 20, which are monitoring target devices, via a communication path such as the Internet. The server device 10 has a function of collecting monitoring target information indicating the state of the home appliance 20 from each of the plurality of home appliances 20 . At this time, the server device 10 transmits a request message requesting monitoring target information to the home appliance 20, and collects monitoring target information returned from the home appliance 20 in response to the request message. The server device 10 is, for example, a cloud server configured on a cloud.

The home appliances 20 are devices to be monitored, such as air conditioners, televisions, and water heaters. In response to the request message from server device 10 , home appliance 20 returns monitoring target information specified in the request message to server device 10 .

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of air conditioner 40, which is an example of home appliances 20-1 to 20-n shown in FIG. The air conditioner 40 has an indoor unit 3 and an outdoor unit 4 . The indoor unit 3 and the outdoor unit 4 are connected so as to be able to communicate with each other, and are also connected by an air flow path so that air can be exchanged between the indoor unit 3 and the outdoor unit 4 .

The indoor unit 3 includes a temperature sensor 111 and a humidity sensor 112 provided near a suction port (not shown) for sucking indoor air, an odor sensor 113 provided in front of the indoor unit 3, an infrared thermography 114 and an image sensor 115. have. Note that the arrangement of the odor sensor 113, the infrared thermography 114, and the image sensor 115 is not limited to the example in FIG. The odor sensor 113 may be provided at a position where the concentration of the gas to be air-conditioned by the air conditioner 40 can be detected. may be The infrared thermography 114 may be provided at a position where it is possible to acquire the heat distribution of the space to be air-conditioned by the air conditioner 40, is installed at a location away from the indoor unit 3, and is wired or wirelessly connected to the indoor unit 3. may be connected. The image sensor 115 may be provided at a position where an image in the space to be air-conditioned by the air conditioner 40 can be acquired, is installed at a location remote from the indoor unit 3, and is connected to the indoor unit 3 by wire or wirelessly. may be connected.

Thus, the air conditioner 40 has multiple sensors. The detected value of the sensor is used as monitoring target information for monitoring the state of the air conditioner 40 . For example, the state of the air conditioner 40 can be determined based on the history of temperature data acquired by the temperature sensor 111 .

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of changes in room temperature of air conditioner 40 shown in FIG. For example, when the air conditioner 40 performs the heating operation, it is assumed that the time required to raise the room temperature from 15 degrees to 20 degrees is time T1. In this air conditioner 40, if the time taken to raise the room temperature from 15 degrees to 20 degrees is time T2 longer than time T1 or time T3 longer than time T2, the air conditioner It can be determined that the air conditioner 40 has failed or that the air conditioner 40 is about to fail. Therefore, the server device 10 can request the air conditioner 40, which is the home appliance 20 to be monitored, to transmit the temperature data acquired by the temperature sensor 111 as the monitoring target information.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a functional configuration of the server device 10 shown in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. The server device 10 has a device information collection unit 11 , a state determination unit 12 , a transmission interval determination unit 13 and a storage unit 14 . The storage unit 14 stores a device attribute information table 15 , a monitoring target information table 16 and a state determination information table 17 .

The device information collection unit 11 collects device attribute information indicating attributes of the home appliance 20 and monitoring target information indicating the state of the home appliance 20 from the home appliance 20 . Specifically, the device information collection unit 11 first acquires the device attribute information from the home appliance 20 that is connected for the first time. The device information collection unit 11 stores the acquired device attribute information in the device attribute information table 15 . Further, the device information collection unit 11 transmits a request message requesting monitoring target information to the home appliance 20 at transmission intervals determined by the transmission interval determination unit 13, which will be described later. Then, the device information collection unit 11 receives the monitoring target information transmitted from the home appliance 20 in response to the request message, and stores it in the monitoring target information table 16 . The monitoring target information includes a detection value acquired by a sensor provided in the home appliance 20, setting information regarding the operation of the home appliance 20, and the like. The device information collection unit 11 may specify the type of detection value to be acquired, such as the type of sensor, and request monitoring target information from each of the plurality of home appliances 20 .

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of the device attribute information table 15 shown in FIG. The device attribute information table 15 includes device attribute information including the device type, device model name, and device serial number of the home appliance 20 .

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of the monitoring target information table 16 shown in FIG. Here, an example in which the home appliance 20 to be monitored is the air conditioner 40 shown in FIG. 2 is shown. The monitoring target information table 16 includes monitoring target information collected by the device information collecting unit 11. Specifically, the device serial number, which is the identification information of the home appliance 20, the time when the monitoring target information is acquired, It includes the indoor temperature, which is the detected value of the temperature data acquired by the temperature sensor 111, the set temperature of the air conditioner 40, and the operation mode. By storing the acquired monitoring target information in the monitoring target information table 16 every time the device information collecting unit 11 collects the monitoring target information, information indicating the time-dependent change in the state of the home appliance 20 is generated.

Returning to the description of FIG. The state determination unit 12 determines the failure possibility of the home appliance 20 based on the monitoring target information collected by the device information collection unit 11 . Specifically, the state determination unit 12 can determine whether the home appliance 20 is in a state of failure, a state in which the home appliance 20 is about to fail, or a state in which the home appliance 20 is in normal operation. . At this time, the state determination unit 12 can determine the failure possibility of the home appliance 20 using the state determination information table 17 .

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of the state determination information table 17 shown in FIG. 4. As shown in FIG. The state determination information table 17 includes device type, device model name, temperature difference between room temperature and set temperature, temperature difference resolution time, operation mode, monitoring target time, room temperature, shortened transmission interval, reference transmission interval. The state determination information table 17 includes, for each type of the home appliance 20, information indicating the criteria for the state determination unit 12 to determine the possibility of failure of the home appliance 20, and information indicating the criteria when the home appliance 20 is in the normal operating state. A reference transmission interval that is an interval at which a request message is transmitted to the home appliance 20, and an interval at which a request message is transmitted to the home appliance 20 when the home appliance 20 is out of order or in a state where the home appliance 20 is about to fail. and a shortened transmission interval where In household appliances 20 of the same type, the shortened transmission interval is shorter than the reference transmission interval.

The state determination information included in the state determination information table 17 may be information determined in advance by the manufacturer of the home appliance 20, or may be information generated based on monitoring target information acquired by the server device 10 in the past. There may be. When the state determination information is generated from the monitoring target information acquired in the past by the server apparatus 10, the state determination information may be generated using machine learning. In this case, the state determination unit 12 determines the failure possibility of the home appliance 20 by pattern matching between the monitoring target information and the state determination information.

For example, based on the monitoring target information table 16 shown in FIG. Using the table 15, the device model name of the home appliance 20 is obtained from the device serial number.

Using the device attribute information table 15 shown in FIG. 5, the state determination unit 12 determines that the device type of the home appliance 20 with the device serial number “01452865ABC” is “room air conditioner” and the device model name is “RA-17X”. information can be obtained. Subsequently, the state determination unit 12 uses the state determination information table 17 to acquire state determination information indicating criteria for determining the failure possibility of the device model name “RA-17X”. The state determination unit 12 can acquire the state determination information on the first line in FIG. 7 from the device model name "RA-17X".

In the state determination information on the first line in FIG. If the time taken to resolve the difference exceeds 30 minutes, the transmission interval of the request message is set to the shortened transmission interval. This room air conditioner is assumed to be the air conditioner 40 shown in FIG. The state determination information also indicates that the monitoring target time is two hours after the air conditioner 40 starts operating. Further, this state determination information indicates that the standard transmission interval is 10 seconds and the shortened transmission interval is 1 second. Using this state determination information, the state determination unit 12 determines the time required to eliminate the temperature difference when the air conditioner 40 is operating in the heating mode and the temperature difference between the room temperature and the set temperature is 10 degrees. exceeds 30 minutes, and inputs the determination result to the transmission interval determination unit 13 .

The state determination information may be generated based on monitoring target information collected not only from the home appliance 20 to be determined but also from other home appliances 20 of the same type as the home appliance 20 to be determined. In this case, the state determination unit 12 uses the monitoring target information collected from the home appliance 20 different from the home appliance 20 to be determined and of the same type as the home appliance 20 to be determined, to determine whether the home appliance 20 to be determined is The failure possibility of the home appliance 20 is determined.

Returning to the description of FIG. The transmission interval determination unit 13 determines an interval at which the device information collection unit 11 transmits the request message to the home appliance 20 based on the determination result of the state determination unit 12 . The transmission interval determination unit 13 can set the transmission interval to either one of the reference transmission interval and the shortened transmission interval included in the state determination information table 17. FIG. When it is determined that the home appliance 20 is in normal operation, the transmission interval determination unit 13 can set the transmission interval to the reference transmission interval. In the example shown in FIG. 6, the reference transmission interval is 10 seconds. When it is determined that the home appliance 20 is in a failed state or when it is determined that the failure of the home appliance 20 is imminent, the transmission interval determination unit 13 sets the transmission interval to a shortened transmission interval shorter than the reference transmission interval. can be set.

FIG. 8 is a flow chart showing an example of the operation of the server device 10 shown in FIG. First, when the device information collection unit 11 of the server device 10 is connected to the home appliance 20, it acquires the device attribute information from the home appliance 20 and stores it in the device attribute information table 15 (step S101).

The state determination unit 12 performs state determination processing (step S102). Specifically, the state determination unit 12 acquires the device model name from the device serial number of the home appliance 20 to be determined using the device attribute information table 15 . Then, the value of the monitoring target information table 16 and the value of the state determination information table 17 are compared from the device model name to determine whether the home appliance 20 is in a normal operating state with a lower possibility of failure than the reference. is higher than the reference, that is, the home appliance 20 is in a state of failure or near failure. Note that if the monitoring target information has not yet been acquired, the above determination processing cannot be performed.

The transmission interval determination unit 13 determines whether or not the determination result of the state determination unit 12 indicates a failure or a failure-like state (step S103). If the determination result indicates that the home appliance 20 is in a failed state or indicates that the home appliance 20 is in a nearly failed state (step S103: Yes), the transmission interval determination unit 13 The transmission interval is set to the shortened transmission interval (step S104). When the determination result indicates that the home appliance 20 is in the normal operating state (step S103: No), the transmission interval determination unit 13 sets the transmission interval to the reference transmission interval (step S105).

Based on the transmission interval determined by the transmission interval determination unit 13, the device information collection unit 11 determines whether or not the transmission timing has arrived (step S106). If the transmission timing has not arrived (step S106: No), the process of step S106 is repeated until the transmission timing arrives. When the transmission timing has arrived (step S106: Yes), the device information collection unit 11 transmits a request message requesting the monitoring target information to the home appliance 20 (step S107). The device information collection unit 11 receives the monitoring target information transmitted by the home appliance 20 in response to the request message, and stores it in the monitoring target information table 16 (step S108). After the process of step S108 is completed, the process returns to step S102.

FIG. 9 is a sequence diagram showing an operation example of the home appliance monitoring system 1 shown in FIG. First, a TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)/IP (Internet Protocol) connection for monitoring target information notification is established between the server device 10 and the home appliance 20 (step S201). Device attribute information and the like are transmitted and received during the connection probability processing.

A subscription request for a request message corresponding to the monitoring target information is transmitted from the home appliance 20 to the server device 10 (step S202). Server device 10 periodically transmits a request message to home appliance 20 at a reference transmission interval, and home appliance 20 transmits monitoring target information to server device 10 in response to the request message. The server device 10 periodically collects monitoring target information. Based on the collected monitoring target information, the server device 10 determines that the home appliance 20 is close to failure (step S203). After it is determined that the failure state is approaching, the server device 10 narrows the transmission interval of the request message to the shortened transmission interval. When it is determined that the home appliance 20 has escaped from the failure state (step S204), the server device 10 restores the transmission interval to the reference transmission interval.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing the configuration of a control circuit for realizing the functions of the server device 10 shown in FIG. Device information collection unit 11 , state determination unit 12 , transmission interval determination unit 13 and storage unit 14 of server device 10 are implemented using processor 91 and memory 92 .

The processor 91 is a CPU (Central Processing Unit) and is also called a central processing unit, a processing unit, an arithmetic unit, a microprocessor, a microcomputer, a DSP (Digital Signal Processor), or the like.

The memory 92 is, for example, non-volatile or volatile semiconductor memory such as RAM (Random Access Memory), ROM (Read Only Memory), flash memory, EPROM (Erasable Programmable ROM), EEPROM (registered trademark) (Electrically EPROM), They include magnetic discs, flexible discs, optical discs, compact discs, mini discs, and DVDs (Digital Versatile Discs).

The processor 91 can implement each function of the server device 10 by reading the computer program corresponding to the processing of each component stored in the memory 92 and executing the read computer program. The memory 92 is also used as temporary memory in each process executed by the processor 91 .

As described above, according to the embodiment of the present invention, the server device 10 sets the transmission interval of the request message to be sent to the home appliance 20 to request the monitoring target information as a monitoring signal indicating the operating state of the home appliance 20 . Make decisions based on target information. At this time, the home appliance 20 only needs to send the specified monitoring target information in response to the request message sent by the server device 10. is controlled by the timing of sending the Therefore, the home appliance 20 does not need to perform processing that consumes a large amount of hardware resources, such as determining the operating state of the home appliance 20 . Therefore, even when the home appliance 20 with limited hardware resources is to be monitored, it is possible to obtain the probability of an abnormality occurring in the home appliance 20 with high accuracy. It becomes possible to detect an abnormality in the home appliance 20 at an early stage.

Also, the server device 10 can collect monitoring target information from a plurality of home appliances 20 . Therefore, when determining the failure possibility of the home appliance 20 to be monitored, the server device 10 uses the monitoring target information collected from the home appliance 20 different from the home appliance 20 to be determined to Twenty fault probabilities can be determined. At this time, the server device 10 may set the monitoring target information to be used as the monitoring target information of the electric home appliance 20 of the same type as the electric home appliance 20 to be determined. In this case, it is possible to determine the operating state of the home appliance 20 with high accuracy even when the amount of monitoring target information collected from the home appliance 20 to be determined is small.

According to the server device 10, the amount of communication between the server device 10 and the home appliance 20 can be reduced when the possibility of the home appliance 20 failing is low. When a pay-as-you-go cloud service is used as the server device 10, the usage fee for the cloud service can be reduced by reducing the amount of communication.

Further, unlike the home appliance 20, the server device 10 can easily add hardware resources according to the processing load. Also, the server device 10 can be connected to a plurality of home appliances 20 . For this reason, when the server device 10 determines the interval at which the server device 10 collects the monitoring target information, that is, the transmission interval of the request message, as in the above embodiment, machine learning can be used for the processing for determining the transmission interval. It is possible. By using machine learning, it becomes possible to control the transmission interval more appropriately, and it becomes possible to achieve both reduction in communication traffic and early detection of anomalies.

The configuration shown in the above embodiment shows an example of the content of the present invention, and it is possible to combine it with another known technology, and one configuration can be used without departing from the scope of the present invention. It is also possible to omit or change the part.

For example, in the above description, the home appliance 20 is directly connected to the network, but the present embodiment is not limited to such an example. In practice, the home appliance 20 is often connected to the network via a communication adapter device.

Further, in the above embodiment, the transmission interval determining unit 13 uses the reference transmission interval or the shortened transmission interval as the interval for transmitting the request message, but the present embodiment is not limited to such an example. The transmission interval determination unit 13 may increase the interval for transmitting the request message as the failure possibility of the home appliance 20 is low. , or a calculation formula may be used to determine the transmission interval from the degree of failure possibility.

1 home appliance monitoring system, 3 indoor unit, 4 outdoor unit, 10 server device, 11 device information collection unit, 12 state determination unit, 13 transmission interval determination unit, 14 storage unit, 15 device attribute information table, 16 monitoring target information table , 17 state determination information table, 20, 20-1 to 20-n home appliances, 40 air conditioner, 91 processor, 92 memory, 111 temperature sensor, 112 humidity sensor, 113 odor sensor, 114 infrared thermography, 115 image sensor.

Claims (9)

a device information collecting unit that transmits a request message requesting monitoring target information indicating a state of a home appliance to the home appliance and collects the monitoring target information from the home appliance;
Based on the collected monitoring target information, it is possible to determine which state the home appliance is in among three or more state candidates indicating the degree of failure possibility of the home appliance. a state determination unit that determines based on a plurality of criteria provided for each combination of two adjacent candidates when arranged in order of degree of, and outputs a determination result indicating the degree of failure possibility;
A transmission interval for determining an interval for transmitting the request message such that the lower the degree of failure possibility indicated by the determination result, the longer the interval at which the device information collecting unit transmits the request message to the home appliance. a decision unit;
A server device comprising 2. The server device according to claim 1, wherein the transmission interval determining unit determines the interval for transmitting the request message from the degree of failure possibility using a calculation formula. 3. The server device according to claim 1, wherein the state determination unit determines the failure possibility of the home appliance based on state determination information indicating criteria for determining the failure possibility of the home appliance. The state determination information is information generated using machine learning,
4. The server device according to claim 3 , wherein the state determination unit determines the failure possibility of the home appliance by pattern matching between the state determination information and the monitoring target information. The device information collection unit is capable of collecting the monitoring target information from a plurality of home appliances,
The state determination unit generates the state determination information based on the monitoring target information collected from a home appliance different from the home appliance to be determined, and combines the state determination information with the monitoring target information of the home appliance to be determined. 5. The server device according to claim 3 or 4 , wherein the possibility of failure of the home appliance to be determined is determined using . The state determination unit generates the state determination information based on the monitoring target information collected from a home appliance different from the home appliance to be determined and of the same type as the home appliance to be determined, 6. The server apparatus according to claim 5 , wherein the state determination information and the monitoring target information of the determination target home appliance are used to determine the failure possibility of the determination target home appliance. home appliances and
a server device that monitors the home appliance;
including
The server device
a device information collecting unit that transmits a request message requesting monitoring target information indicating a state of a home appliance to the home appliance and collects the monitoring target information from the home appliance;
Based on the collected monitoring target information, it is possible to determine which state the home appliance is in among three or more state candidates indicating the degree of failure possibility of the home appliance. a state determination unit that determines based on a plurality of criteria provided for each combination of two adjacent candidates when arranged in order of degree of, and outputs a determination result indicating the degree of failure possibility;
A transmission interval for determining an interval for transmitting the request message such that the lower the degree of failure possibility indicated by the determination result, the longer the interval at which the device information collecting unit transmits the request message to the home appliance. a decision unit;
A home appliance monitoring system comprising: A home appliance monitoring method in which a server device monitors a home appliance, comprising:
a step in which the server device transmits a request message requesting monitoring target information indicating a state of the home appliance to the home appliance;
a step in which the server device collects the monitoring target information transmitted by the home appliance in response to the request message;
Based on the collected monitoring target information, the server device determines which state the home appliance is in from among three or more state candidates indicating the degree of failure possibility of the home appliance. judging based on a plurality of criteria provided for each combination of two adjacent candidates when arranged in order of the degree of failure possibility, and outputting a judgment result indicating the degree of failure possibility; ,
determining an interval for transmitting the request message so that the server device transmits the request message at a longer interval as the degree of failure possibility indicated by the determination result is lower;
A home appliance monitoring method comprising: sending a request message to the home appliance requesting monitoring target information indicating the state of the home appliance;
collecting the monitoring target information transmitted by the home appliance in response to the request message;
Based on the collected monitoring target information, it is possible to determine which state the home appliance is in among three or more state candidates indicating the degree of failure possibility of the home appliance. determining based on a plurality of criteria provided for each combination of two adjacent candidates when arranged in order of degree of failure, and outputting a determination result indicating the degree of failure possibility;
determining the interval for transmitting the request message so that the interval for transmitting the request message becomes longer as the degree of failure possibility indicated by the determination result is lower;
A home appliance monitoring program that causes a computer to execute

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