JPH04240967A - Facsimile equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain information of a communication charge with high reliability by calculating the communication charge based on an equipment function of a destination and the result of past communication. CONSTITUTION:One data transmission speed decided in succeeding communication is estimated from a past data transmission speed stored in 'data transmission speed history'. When plural data transmission speeds are the same speed, for example, in this estimate, the speed is adopted and when they are different, one transmission speed with a highest frequency of occurrence is selected. Then the communication time is calculated based on the estimated data transmission speed, the stored minimum transmission time and the data quantity of picture information. Then a communication charge per unit time is read from a unit charge table TB2 based on the telephone number of the destination dialed at present. Then the communication charge is calculated based on the communication charge per unit time and the communication time and the result is displayed on an operation display section 8.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

0001

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a facsimile machine having a simple dialing function such as one-touch dialing or speed dialing.

0002

2. Description of the Related Art Facsimile machines are often equipped with simple dialing functions such as one-touch dialing and speed dialing. In one-touch dialing, a desired destination is specified by operating a single key, and in speed dialing, a desired destination is specified by inputting an abbreviated number.

[0003] Generally, when a facsimile machine sends an image, it uses a certain transmission control procedure to determine the function of the other party's device.
An image signal suitable for the destination device is transmitted.

On the other hand, when a call is made using the simple dialing function, the determined device function of the other station is memorized, and the next time the same dialing operation is performed, the device function of the other station that has been determined is used. There is a facsimile machine that immediately transmits an image signal suitable for the other party based on the above. The transmission control procedure in this case is called a shortened protocol, which reduces the time required for the transmission control procedure and saves communication charges.

[0005] By the way, when transmitting an image, there are times when it is desirable to know the communication fee in advance. For this case,
For example, as seen in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 62-160658, a system has been proposed in which communication charges are calculated and displayed before the start of image transmission.

[0006] Communication charges can be calculated from communication time and communication charges per unit time. Further, the communication time can be calculated based on the amount of image information to be transmitted and the amount of transmission per unit time.

The amount of image information to be transmitted varies depending on the data compression method, and also varies depending on the image size when the image is scaled and transmitted. Further, the amount of transmission per unit time varies depending on the data transmission speed of the modem and the minimum transmission time specified by the receiving side.

[0008]

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In the above-mentioned proposal, communication charges are calculated based on certain preset conditions such as the data compression method, data transmission rate, and transmission size. For this reason, when actually communicating with the other party, the setting conditions are often different from those of the other party, and there is a problem that the reliability of the calculated communication fee is low.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus which can improve the above-mentioned problems and obtain highly reliable communication charge information before communication.

0010

[Means for Solving the Problems] To this end, the present invention provides a method for determining the device function of the other party and the data transmission speed of the image transmission when a call is made and an image is sent by operating a one-touch key or inputting an abbreviated number. is stored in correspondence with that key or abbreviated number, and if the same key operation or abbreviated number is input thereafter, the data amount of the transmitted image, the previously memorized device functions and data transmission speed The present invention is characterized in that the communication time is calculated based on the communication time, and the communication fee for image transmission is calculated based on the communication time and displayed before the transmission to the other party.

[0011]

[Operation] Since communication charges are calculated based on the device functions of the other party and past actual communication results, highly reliable communication charge information can be obtained.

0012

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of a facsimile machine according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, a scanner 1 reads an original image and extracts image information, and a plotter 2 records the image on recording paper. The encoding/decoding unit 3 compresses the image information to be transmitted by encoding, and restores the received image information to the original image information by decoding. The image scaling unit 4 scales the size of the transmitted image to the recording paper size of the receiving side as necessary.

The image memory 5 is for storing image information, and the modem 6 is for transmitting and receiving image information and various procedure signals for transmission control. The network control device 7 is connected to a telephone line and performs predetermined line control when making and receiving calls. The operation display section 8 displays the operating status of the device and is used by the operator to perform various operations. This operation display section 8 is provided with a plurality of one-touch dial keys each labeled A, B, C, . . . and a numeric keypad for inputting a dial number.

The system memory 9 stores information registered in advance and information obtained by executing communication. In this embodiment, the system memory 9 contains a simple dial destination information table TB1 and a unit charge table TB1.
2 is formed.

As shown in FIG. 2, the simple dial destination information table TB1 contains information such as "telephone number", "data transmission speed history" and "device function" corresponding to one-touch dialing and speed dialing, respectively. It stores information. As shown in FIG. 3, the unit charge table TB2 stores in advance correspondence information between area codes of various parts of the country and communication charges per unit time when communicating with those areas.

The system control section 10 is a microcomputer that controls each section mentioned above, and the system bus 11 is
These are signal lines through which various control signals and data are exchanged between each of the above parts.

With the above configuration, when the facsimile apparatus of this embodiment is installed at a place of use, the correspondence information between the above-mentioned area code and communication charge is stored in the unit charge table TB2 of the system memory 9. Further, when using this facsimile machine, the operator performs a simple dial registration process by performing a predetermined operation. As a result, the telephone number of the destination is stored in the simple dial destination information table TB1.

Next, when transmitting an image, the operator sets the original to be transmitted on the scanner 1, as shown in FIG. Further, when memory transmission is performed, an accumulation operation is performed afterwards. When this storage operation is performed, the facsimile machine reads the image of the set transmission document and stores it in the image memory 5 (process 101).

Next, the operator sets the destination using normal dialing or simple dialing. In the case of normal dialing, the destination telephone number is entered as usual from the numeric keys, and in the case of simple dialing, the user presses a one-touch key or inputs an abbreviated number (process 102).

When a dial operation is performed, the facsimile machine determines the operation (process 103). now,
Assuming that a simple dial operation has been performed (process 10
3 Y), here the fee calculation process is executed (process 104
).

FIG. 5 shows this fee calculation process. That is, the facsimile device determines whether information on the "data transmission speed history" and "device function" of the destination that has just been dialed is stored in the simple dial destination information table TB1 (process 201). .

[0023] These two pieces of information are stored when communication has been executed with the other party in the past, and are not set when making a call for the first time.

If the information is not stored as described above (N in process 201), a message indicating that the fee cannot be calculated is displayed on the operation display unit 8 (process 203), and the fee calculation process is stopped.

The operator confirms the display and starts the calling operation (FIG. 4, process 105). As a result, the facsimile machine uses the simple dial destination information table T.
The "telephone number" of the destination that has just been dialed is read out from B1, and a call is made to that destination (process 106).
. When the other party responds, it is determined whether there is information on the "device function" of the other party in the simple dial destination information table TB1, as was done in the above charge calculation process (
Process 107).

[0026] Here, if there is no such information, (processing 1
07N), execute the normal transmission control procedure. That is, by receiving the DIS signal, NSF signal, etc. from the other party,
Sends SS signals, modem training signals and TCF signals. As a result, modem training for determining the data transmission speed for transmitting image information is executed. Then, if the training is successful, a CFR signal is sent from the other party (processing 108).

By the way, the device function of the other party is notified by the above-mentioned NSF signal. The device functions include, for example, the recording size of the destination device, the data compression method for image information, the maximum data transmission rate, and the minimum transmission time.

[0028] This facsimile machine sequentially reads out the original images set on the scanner 1 or the images stored in the image memory 5. Then, the image information is converted into image information adapted to the above-mentioned device functions, and the image is transmitted to the other party. That is, if the recording paper size is smaller than the size of the transmitted document, the image is reduced. Furthermore, the image information to be transmitted is encoded using the data compression method of the destination. Furthermore, the image information of each line is transmitted at time intervals longer than the minimum transmission time (processing 1
09).

When this image transmission is completed, it is determined whether the call was made using the simple dial (process 110). In the case of a simple dial call (Y in process 110), it is determined whether or not the "device function" corresponding to the destination is stored in the simple dial destination information table TB1 (process 111).
). If it is not currently stored as described above (processing 111
N), as the "device function", various information received in the NSF signal is stored (processing 112). Similarly, the data transmission speed at which the image was actually transmitted is stored as a "data transmission speed history" (process 113).

[0030] In this way, when a call is made using the simple dial, the "device function" and "data transmission rate history" are stored. Note that the "history of data transmission speed" stores the data transmission speed at which images were transmitted in a certain number of communications in the past.

Next, it is assumed that a simple dialing operation is performed on the destination party for which these pieces of information are stored. In this case, the facsimile machine, in the fee calculation process,
When it is determined that there is information on "device function" and "data transmission rate history" (Y in process 201), it is then determined whether memory transmission is to be performed (process 203).

If it is now memory transmission (Y in process 203), the amount of data of the image information to be transmitted is calculated based on the amount of image data stored in the image memory 5 and each information of the above-mentioned "device function". do. In other words, since the amount of image information to be transmitted varies depending on whether the image is scaled or not, the data compression method, etc., the amount of data to be transmitted to the destination is calculated (process 204).

Next, one data transmission speed to be determined for the next communication is estimated from the past data transmission speeds stored in the "data transmission speed history". For example, if multiple data transmission speeds are the same, then that value is used for this estimation, but when they are different, the value with the highest frequency of occurrence is used for this estimation.
transmission speed. Then, the communication time is calculated based on the estimated data transmission speed, the stored minimum transmission time, and the amount of image information (process 205).

Next, the communication charge per unit time is read out from the unit charge table TB2 based on the telephone number of the other party that has just been dialed (process 206). Then, the communication fee is calculated based on the communication fee per unit time and the communication time (process 207), and is displayed on the operation display section 8 (process 208).

Next, the presence or absence of a recording request is checked (
Processing 209). If the operator wishes to record the calculation results, he/she requests recording by performing a predetermined operation. When the facsimile device performs the recording request operation (process 209
(Y), the communication time and communication charge just calculated are recorded and outputted by the plotter 2 (process 210), and this charge calculation process is ended. Also, if there is no recording request (N of process 209)
), the process ends.

On the other hand, if it is not memory transmission (processing 2
03-N), the data amount of image information is estimated based on the set document size. This process can be performed, for example, by CCITT.
No. 1 in the recommendation. The amount of data of standard image information such as one chart is stored in advance for each image size. Then, the size of the set document is determined, and based on the amount of image information corresponding to the size, the amount of data to be transmitted to the other party is calculated in the same way as described above (process 211).

[0037] As a result, a standard communication fee corresponding to the document size is displayed (proceed to process 205).

Furthermore, when a call is made to the destination, if the device functions of the destination are already stored (Y in process 107), a transmission control procedure using a known shortened protocol is started. In this case, the facsimile device first sends out a procedure signal declaring execution of the shortened protocol, and then immediately sends an image signal adapted to the destination device. As a result, the procedures of transmitting and receiving the NSF and NSS signals and modem training are omitted (processing 114).

After the image transmission is completed, if the device function of the other party is already stored as described above (Y in process 111), only the data transmission speed at which the image was transmitted is stored (proceed to process 113).

On the other hand, if a call is made by normal dialing (N in process 103), a normal transmission control procedure is executed (proceed to process 108). In addition, in this case (N in process 110
), information such as device functions and data transmission speed is not stored.

As described above, in this embodiment, when a call is made using a simple dial operation and an image is sent, information such as the data compression method of the other party, minimum transmission time, recording paper size, etc. is sent in response to the dial. is stored as a device function, and
The data transmission speed at which the image was sent is memorized. and,
Next, when making a call using the same dial operation, the transmission fee is calculated and displayed based on the amount of data of the transmitted image and the above-mentioned stored information. This makes it possible to obtain highly reliable communication fee information before making a call.

Furthermore, since the calculated communication time and communication charges can be arbitrarily recorded and output, it becomes easy to check the calculated charges by comparing them with the actual communication results.

[0043] In the above embodiment, when the device function of the called party is stored, the transmission control procedure of the shortened protocol is executed, but whether or not to execute the shortened protocol depends on the actual Needless to say, this has nothing to do with inventions.

[0044]

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, according to the present invention, when a call is made using one-touch dialing or speed dialing and an image is sent, the device function of the other party and the data transmission speed at which the image was sent are stored. , when the same dial operation is performed thereafter, the communication charge is calculated and displayed based on the amount of data of the transmitted image, the memorized device functions, and the data transmission speed, so it is possible to It becomes possible to obtain highly reliable communication charge information.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a facsimile apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of information stored in a simple dial destination information table.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of information stored in a unit charge table.

FIG. 4 is an operational flowchart of transmission processing.

FIG. 5 is an operational flowchart of communication charge calculation processing.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Scanner 2 Plotter 3 Encoding/decoding section 4 Image scaling section 5 Image memory 6 Modem 7 Network control device 8 Operation display section 9 System memory 10 System control section TB1 Simple dial destination information table TB2
Unit price table

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A facsimile machine having a simple dialing function that stores destinations corresponding to each key or abbreviated number and makes a call to the corresponding destination by operating one key or inputting an abbreviated number, A storage means for storing the device function of the other party and the data transmission speed at which the image was sent when a call is made and an image is sent by inputting the above key or the abbreviated number, and the same after that. a communication time calculation means that calculates communication time based on the data amount of the transmitted image and the corresponding device function and data transmission speed stored in the past when a key operation or abbreviated number is input; a communication fee calculation means for calculating a communication fee for image transmission based on the
A facsimile device comprising display means for displaying the calculated communication charge before making a call to the other party. 2. The facsimile apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising recording means for recording and outputting the calculated communication time and communication fee.