JPH05153329A - Portable picture reader - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To attain printing of an image over plural lines in a cordless way by utilizing a light emitting section and a light receiving section for picture reading for a light emitting section and a light receiving section for optical communication for cordless transmission. CONSTITUTION:Picture information read from an original is stored in a picture information storage section 4 and a picture transfer command is inputted from an input section 6. Thus, a light source control section 7 reads picture information from the picture information storage section 4 by a transfer procedure received from a light receiving section 2. Then an optical output of a light emitting section 1 is controlled to obtain a conversion output of an optical signal. Thus, both functions for picture reading and optical communication are realized by one set of the light emitting section 1 and the light receiving section 2. That is, when print information is received from the light receiving section 2 through optical communication, an optical signal is converted into picture information and stored in the picture information storage section 4, a print command is received and its content is printed out. Thus, the portable printer is operated by having only to provide a print buffer for one line to attain printing over plural lines with several separate processings.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a portable image reading device, and more particularly, to a portable image reading device configured to print recognized image information by using a light emitting element and a light receiving element for image reading. Is. The device of the present invention is particularly suitable for a portable printer having an image reading function.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a portable image reading device of this type,
A so-called portable printer is used by being connected to an information processing device (host-side device) such as a personal computer, and can encode an image optically read from a document surface and transfer it to the host-side device. A cable was used to connect to.

[0003]

However, in the conventional portable printer, the transmitting unit and the receiving unit as means for transmitting the image information read from the original document to the host side device and receiving the transmission procedure from the host side device. Is required separately from the document reading means, which complicates the operation and configuration of the portable image reading device.

The present invention has been made in consideration of the above circumstances, and the operation is performed by utilizing the light emitting unit and the light receiving unit for image reading as the light emitting unit and the light receiving unit for optical communication for cordless transmission. (EN) Provided is a portable image reading device which is simple and has a simple structure.

[0005]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram clearly showing the basic structure of the present invention. In the figure, the present invention has light-emitting / light-receiving units 1 and 2 for image reading, image recognition unit 3, image information storage unit 4 for writing / reading image information, and printing unit 5, A portable image reading device configured to store image information read optically and print the read image information, wherein an input section 6 for inputting an image transfer instruction and an image transfer instruction are received, By controlling the light output from the light emitting unit 1,
A light source control unit 7 which converts the image information read from the image information storage unit 4 into an optical signal and outputs the optical signal, and when print information is received as an optical signal from the light receiving unit 2, the optical signal is converted into image information. When the image transfer instruction is received, the image transfer procedure is given to the light source control section 7, and when the print instruction is received, the print instruction is sent to the print section 5. The portable image reading device is characterized in that it is provided with a reception control section 8 for giving it.

Further, when the portable image reading apparatus of the present invention is constituted by a cordless portable printer, a block receiving switch is provided as an operating section and a reception completion lamp is provided as an informing section on the printer side so that printing can be performed by the host side apparatus. After specifying, the data to be printed by the host device can be received in block units on the portable printer side. Therefore, the portable printer that has only one line of print buffer can be operated. By doing so, printing over a plurality of lines can be performed several times.

[0007]

According to the present invention, when the image transfer instruction is input from the input unit 6 while the image information read from the original is stored in the image information storage unit 4, the light source control unit 7
According to the transfer procedure received from the light receiving unit 2, the image information is read from the image information storage unit 4, and the light output of the light emitting unit 1 is controlled to convert it into an optical signal for output. Therefore, both the image reading function and the optical communication function can be realized by one set of the light emitting unit and the light receiving unit. When print information is received as an optical signal from the light receiving section 2, the optical signal is converted into image information and stored in the image information storage section 4, and the content is printed by receiving a print instruction. You can

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The present invention will be described in detail below based on the embodiments shown in the drawings. The present invention is not limited to this. 2 and 3 are external views of the apparatus when the present invention is applied to a cordless portable printer (hereinafter abbreviated as portable printer). In FIG. 2, reference numeral 10 is a power switch for turning on the power. Reference numeral 11 is a line number changeover switch for determining the reading width. A send button 12 is used to instruct to send data from the portable printer to the host-side device (personal computer).

Reference numeral 13 is a read button for instructing the start of receiving data input from the image reading section 14 shown in FIG. Reference numeral 15 denotes a transmission / reception unit, which constitutes a window for optical communication from the portable printer to the host-side device. 16 is a battery case,
It is for storing the battery which is the power source of this portable printer. Reference numeral 17 is a power lamp. The roller 18 shown in FIG. 3 is for detecting the amount of movement when the portable printer is moved on the document surface.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing the structure of the above portable printer. In the figure, 20 is a CPU,
A central processing circuit for controlling the apparatus, including a ROM 21 in which a program is stored and a RAM 22 including a printer buffer and storing a read image are prepared. An operation key 23 is composed of a power switch 10, a row number changeover switch 11, a transmission button 12, a read button 13, and a block reception switch (not shown). Reference numeral 24 is a power supply for applying a voltage to the portable printer, and 25 is a power lamp for notifying that the power is on.

Reference numeral 26 denotes a light source control unit, which includes a light emitting unit 27
This is a gate for switching between use for reading the original 28 and use for transmitting. That is, the light emitting section 27 is constantly made to emit light during the image reading of the document 28, and is made to emit light according to the waveform given from the transmitting section 29 during the optical communication.

Reference numeral 30 denotes a recognition unit, which recognizes characters from the image information output from the light receiving unit 31 and encodes them when reading the original 28, and stores the result in the RAM 22. The light emitting unit and the light receiving unit are specifically configured by photodiodes. A receiving unit 32 receives the transmission procedure sent from the host-side device and gives it to the sending unit 29. Thereby, the image information stored in the RAM 22 can be optically communicated to the host side device. In addition,
A drive detection unit 33 is for detecting the movement amount of the printer from the rotation amount of the roller 18 when the image on the original 28 is traced using the portable printer.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing the structure of the printing unit. In the figure, the same components as those in FIG. 4 are designated by the same reference numerals and the description thereof will be omitted. In FIG. 5, reference numeral 40 denotes a reception completion lamp as an informing means, which is a lamp indicating that the reception of data from the host side device is completed. Reference numeral 41 is a print density volume for adjusting the print density. 42 is a thermal ribbon, 43 is a thermal head, and is a printing mechanism unit that realizes a printer function together with the roller 18 and the drive amount detection unit 33.

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram showing the structure of transmission data in communication. The transmission data is mainly composed of a control code, a device code, an ID code and data, and is transferred to the host side device in this order. The control code is a coded content for controlling the portable printer from the host side device, for example, paper feed "0F".
(H) ”, centering“ 05 (H) ”, line feed“ 01 ”
(H) ”and other codes.

The device code is used by the printer to determine whether or not the data, which will be described later, can be received after the printer receives the code transmitted from the host side device. The ID code is a code for identifying a communicable party, and is registered in advance between the host side device and the printer side to enable communication between the same ID codes.

The basic structure of the data to be printed is shown in FIG.
As shown in FIG. 3, it is composed of 1 bit start bit, variable length data and 1 bit stop bit. In addition, as a data format, a communication system using light (infrared ray) of digital data is used.

FIG. 8 is a flow chart showing the control operation of the CPU 20. In this embodiment, the data is divided into the capacity of the printer buffer of the portable printer and printed so that the whole image of the print image of the host device can be printed by the cordless portable printer. In the figure, the flow on the left side shows the process flow of the host side device, and the flow on the right side shows that on the portable printer side. It is assumed that the portable printer has image information read from a document by the same operation as in the past and the content thereof is stored in the RAM 22.

First, the printing operation of the portable printer begins with the host device issuing a printing instruction for the portable printer (step 50). If there is a print instruction from the host side device, it is divided into blocks (step 51) and waits for a block transmission request (step 52). Here, the block division means that the entire print image is divided into a plurality of divided image areas 1 to 1.
The number of divisions is N, and the number of divisions is determined according to the capacity of the printer buffer of the portable printer.

That is, as shown in FIG. 9, in the block division, first, the area on the memory of the entire print image is confirmed (step 510), the division number is set (step 511),
The top address of each divided area is stored in the memory (step 51).
2) consist of processing.

On the other hand, the portable printer waits for the block reception switch to be pressed, and when the switch is pressed (step 53), block data transmission (step 54) and block data reception (step 55) are executed. That is, the print image data is transmitted from the host side device to the portable printer side by one block area by optical communication.

FIG. 10 is a schematic view conceptually showing the above block data transmission processing. Next, the host side device
Determine if block data is complete (step
56), if NO, the next block data is called from the RAM 22 and the block transmission request is waited again.

On the portable printer side, the reception completion lamp lights up when one block of data is received (step 57). Therefore, the user confirms the lighting of the lamp and then performs the printing operation by manual operation ( Step 58). Then printing is complete, the printer buffer is empty,
And if you want to continue printing (step 59), step 53
Then, the next data is requested to the host side device.
That is, the process proceeds to step 52.

By repeating such processing, the entire image of the print image can be printed. It should be noted that the division printing can be managed not only by dividing the image but also by the print block if it is managed in units of print stop codes.

[0024]

According to the present invention, it is possible to print an image over a plurality of lines only by the operation on the portable printer side. Since the light emitting unit and the light receiving unit for image reading are used as the light emitting unit and the light receiving unit for optical communication in the cordless transmission means, the configuration of the portable printer can be simplified,
As a result, the cost of the portable printer can be reduced.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram clearly showing a basic configuration of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an external view of a portable printer that is an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an external view of a portable printer that is an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an example.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a printing unit according to an embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram showing a transmission data structure according to an embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram showing a basic configuration of the data shown in FIG.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart illustrating the operation of the embodiment.

9 is a flowchart illustrating a block division process in FIG.

FIG. 10 is a schematic diagram illustrating print image division transfer according to an embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Light emitting unit 2 Light receiving unit 3 Image recognition unit 4 Image information storage unit 5 Printing unit 6 Input unit 7 Light source control unit 8 Reception control unit

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A light emitting / receiving unit for reading an image, an image recognizing unit, an image information storing unit for writing / reading image information, and a printing unit, and stores image information optically read from a document surface. In addition, the portable image reading device is configured to print the read image information, and controls an input unit for inputting an image transfer instruction and a light output from the light emitting unit when the image transfer instruction is received. Thus, the light source control unit that converts the image information read from the image information storage unit into an optical signal and outputs the optical signal, and converts the optical signal into the image information when the print information is received as the optical signal from the light receiving unit. Reception control for giving an image transfer procedure to the light source control unit when an image transfer instruction is received, and for giving a print instruction to the printing unit when a print instruction is received. Equipped with department A portable image reading device characterized by the above. 2. An operation unit for performing an operation for receiving data in block units, a notification unit for indicating completion of reception of data in block units, and a division printing unit for receiving and printing print information by division transfer. The portable image reading device according to claim 1, further comprising: