JPS60100916A - Rice cooker - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to a rice cooker in which each process such as rice cooking and keeping warm is executed in series by a rice cooking control circuit equipped with, for example, a microphone 0 computer or the like.

[Technical background of the invention]

BACKGROUND ART In recent years, rice cookers have been provided that are configured to sequentially execute processes such as cooking rice and keeping rice warm using, for example, a microcomputer.

However, if a temporary power outage occurs in this type of rice cooker while a process is being executed, the power supply to the microcomputer is cut off, so information about which process was being executed before the power outage is lost. Therefore, conventionally, in such cases, it has been common to perform a heat retention process, for example, immediately after recovery from a power outage.

[Problems with background technology]

However, in the above configuration, the rice cooking process is uniformly shifted to the warming process regardless of whether or not the rice cooking process has actually finished, so it is sufficient that the rice cooking process has actually finished at the time of a power outage, but in reality, the rice cooking process is not completed. If it is not completed, a problem arises in that rice cannot be cooked. On the other hand, if the configuration is configured so that the rice cooking process is executed uniformly after the power outage returns, if the rice cooking process has actually finished at the time of the power outage, the rice will be cooked properly by running the rice cooking process again. This creates a problem in that the rice that has been rising becomes burnt.

[Purpose of the invention]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a rice cooker that can restart an appropriate process after the temporary power outage is restored even if there is a temporary power outage during the execution of a process, and can always cook delicious rice.

[Summary of the invention]

The present invention configures a rice cooking control circuit with a non-volatile memory, stores at least process information on the completion/unfinished rice cooking process in the non-volatile memory, and restarts the rice cooking process after recovery from a temporary power cut during execution of the process. The feature is that the stroke is determined based on the stroke information in the nonvolatile memory.

[Embodiments of the invention]

A first embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 to 5. First, the first part shows the circuit configuration of the entire rice cooker.
In the figure, 1 is a power supply, 2 is a rice-cooking heater, 6 and 4 are heat-retaining heaters, 5 is a rice-cooking relay switch, and 6 is a heat-retaining relay switch. 7 is a power transformer, 8 is a power circuit, 9
10 is a rice cooking control circuit to be described in detail later; 11 is a rice cooking relay drive circuit; 12 is a heat retention relay drive circuit;
3 is an initialization circuit, and this Esha 241 circuit 1
3 outputs a rising signal to the rice cooking control circuit 10 in synchronization with the rising of the power supply 1. Details of the rice cooking control circuit 10 are shown in FIG. 2, in which 14 is a pot temperature detection circuit, 15 is a temperature sensor of this pot temperature detection circuit 14,
The temperature sensor 15 is provided at the bottom of the pot (not shown) for thermal conductivity. 16 is a microcomputer which, when the rice cooking switch 17 is set, drives the rice cooking relay drive circuit 11 and the warming relay drive circuit 12 based on the pot temperature information from the pot temperature detection circuit 14; The rice cooking heater 2 and the warming heater 3 and 4 are controlled to be turned on and off, and each process of rice cooking and warming is executed in series. An example of execution of each of these steps is shown in FIG. 3 together with energization/disconnection patterns of the rice cooking heater 2 and the warming heater 6.4. That is, when the rice cooking switch 17 is set at time to, the "soaking process" is started. In this "soaking process," the rice cooking heater 2 is energized, and when the temperature of the pot rises to T1, the rice cooking heater 2 is repeatedly turned on and off for a predetermined period of time, thereby promoting water absorption into the rice in the pot. When the "soaking process J(5)1" is completed, the process moves to the "cooking process" (time t1). "
The rice cooking process is carried out by continuously energizing the rice heater 2, and when the rice in the pot is cooked and reaches a so-called dry-up state, the process ends when the temperature of the pot reaches T2.
), then move on to the "uneven process". In this "uniform process", electricity is repeatedly turned on and off to the rice cooking heater 2 for a predetermined period of time, and so-called gelatinization of the cooked rice is promoted. When the "unevenness process" is completed, the process moves to the "warming process". "Warming process"
In this case, each time the temperature of the pot falls below T3, electricity is applied to the heat-retaining heaters 3 and 4, thereby maintaining the pot at approximately the temperature T3.

Now, in Fig. 2, 18 is a memory circuit, which is a non-volatile memory such as gPROM1? , a sinker embedding circuit 20 and a readout circuit 21;

At the start of each process of rice cooking, steaming, and keeping warm, a signal corresponding to the process is stored as process information in the EFROM 19 via the erase/write circuit 20. When the microcomputer 16 receives a rising signal from the initialization circuit 13, the process information of r(6) EPROMI 9 is successively sent to the microcomputer 16 via the continuation circuit 21, and the process is executed from that process based on the process information. Program is set.

Next, the operation of the above configuration will be explained. For example, if a power outage occurs in power supply 1 during the rice cooking process, the EPROMI
9 stores process information of the rice cooking process written at the start of the rice cooking process. Then, when the initialization circuit 13 outputs a rising signal to the microcomputer 16 due to the rising of the power supply voltage upon recovery from the power outage,
Since the process information of the rice cooking process is read out from the EPROM 19, the rice cooking process is executed after the return, and further each process of shading and warming is sequentially executed, and the rice cooking is completed. For example, if a power outage occurs during the heat retention process, the EPROM
19 stores the process information of the keep-warm process written at the start of the keep-warm process, so the EP
The process information of the warming process is read from the ROM 19. As a result, after recovery from a power outage, the warming process is restarted and the rice cooking process is not executed again, so there is no risk of the cooked rice being cooked again and causing burnt rice.

4 and 5 show a second embodiment of the invention.

The same parts as in the first embodiment are given the same reference numerals, and the explanation will be omitted. Only the specific parts will be explained. Reference numeral 22 is a power failure detection circuit, which includes a resistor 2 connected in series between both bus bars of the power supply 10.
6. It is equipped with a diode 24 and a photocoupler 25, and when a power outage occurs in the power source 1 and the frequency signal from the photocoupler 25 disappears, it outputs a power outage signal to the rice cooking control circuit 10.

On the other hand, 26 is a non-volatile memory MNO8 (Metal
N1trade O+side Sem1condu
ctor), which is the storage circuit 27. It is connected to the microcomputer 16 via a read circuit 28 and an erase circuit 29, and together constitutes a memory circuit 60. When a power failure signal is output from the power failure detection circuit 22 to the microcomputer 16, the memory contents in the MNO 826 are erased by the erase circuit 29, and then the pledge circuit 27 converts the signal corresponding to the process being executed at that time into process information. I will have MNO82 Otsu memorize it as. As a result, during a power outage, the process that was being executed when the power outage occurred is stored. 61
32 is a power supply voltage detection circuit connected to the power supply circuit 8, and 32 is a switching circuit provided between this power supply voltage detection circuit 51 and the MNOS 26. When the power supply voltage reaches a predetermined value upon recovery from a power outage, the switching circuit is activated. 32 to switch the supply voltage to MNO826, and with this, MN
The process information stored in the OS 26 is read into the corresponding memory cell and inputted to the microcomputer 16 via the continuation circuit 28. Similarly to the first embodiment, the microcomputer 16 determines the process to be restarted after recovery from a power outage based on the process information read from the MNOS 26. Specifically, when a power failure occurs after recovery from a power outage, the microcomputer 16 It will restart from the process that was being executed, so
After all, it is certain that rice cooking cannot be completed after the power is restored due to a power outage in the middle of cooking rice, or that the same process is repeated even though the rice cooking process has already been completed, resulting in burnt rice. can be prevented.

In each of the above embodiments, the steps of rice cooking, steaming, and warming that were currently being executed at the time of a power outage were stored in the nonvolatile memory, but the present invention is not limited to this. Instead, a 1-bit non-volatile memory may be used to store only the completion/uncompletion of the rice cooking process.Even if this is done, even if the rice cooking process has been completed at the time of a power outage, the information will be returned after the power is restored. The worst case scenario of running the rice cooking process again and causing burnt rice can be definitely prevented. Also, as a non-volatile memory, EPROM19
Of course, it is not limited to MNO826 or MNO826, and may be a device that stores information magnetically, but if a nonvolatile memory stores information depending on whether or not it retains charge, the rice cooking process may not be completed. It is desirable that the process information is stored in the charge state, and the process information for the end of the rice cooking process is stored in the charge discharge state. Conversely, if the process information for the end of the rice cooking process is stored in a charged state, and the process information for unfinished rice cooking processes is stored in a discharged state, a long power outage will occur when the rice cooking process ends. If the charge in the non-volatile memory were to be lost due to a power outage, the microcomputer would determine that the rice cooking process was not completed after the power outage and would restart the cooking process, potentially resulting in burnt rice. It is from. Furthermore, in each of the above embodiments, the non-volatile memory was provided separately from the microcomputer, but if a microcomputer with built-in non-volatile memory is used, the number of parts can be reduced and costs can be reduced. It is something that can be done.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described above, the present invention comprises a rice cooking control circuit equipped with a non-volatile memory, stores at least process information on the completion and unfinished rice cooking process in the non-volatile memory, and prevents temporary power outage during process execution. The feature is that the process to restart after the power is restored is determined based on the process information in the non-volatile memory, so that the appropriate process can be resumed after the power is restored from a temporary power outage, and the process can be restarted during a temporary interruption in the middle of cooking. It has the effect of being able to cook delicious rice even though it uses electricity.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Figures 1 to 3 show the first embodiment of the present invention. Figure 1 is a circuit diagram of the entire rice cooker, Figure 2 is a block diagram of the rice cooking control circuit, and Figure 3 is a diagram of temperature changes in the pot. 4 and 5 are views corresponding to FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, respectively, showing a second embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, 2 is a rice cooking heater, 6 and 4 are heat retention heaters, 10 is a rice cooking control circuit, 19 is an EPROM (non-volatile memory), 2
2 is a power failure detection circuit, 26 is MNOS (non-volatile memory)
It is. Applicant Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co., Ltd. Kinsha 7

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. In a rice cooking control circuit that sequentially executes each process of rice cooking, keeping warm, etc., the rice cooking control circuit is configured with a nonvolatile memory, and the nonvolatile memory stores at least the rice cooking process. A rice cooker, characterized in that process information on completed and unfinished processes is stored, and a process to be restarted after recovery from a temporary power cut during execution of a process is determined based on the process information in the non-volatile memory. 2. A temporary power outage detection circuit is provided, and the process information is such that when a temporary power outage occurs, information on the currently executed process is stored in a nonvolatile memory. rice cooker. 6. The rice cooker according to claim 1, wherein the process information is stored in a nonvolatile memory at the start of each process. 4. Non-volatile memory stores process information in row (1) depending on whether or not electric charge is retained, and process information for incomplete rice cooking processes is stored in a charged state, and process information for completed rice cooking processes is stored in a discharged state. The rice cooker according to any one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that the information is stored. 5. The rice cooker according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the rice cooking control circuit is constituted by a microcomputer with a built-in nonvolatile memory.