JP2008283266A - House apparatus controller - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent a house apparatus from being unnecessarily operated even without providing a sensor which detects an action of a human body. <P>SOLUTION: A control unit 8 compares use states of house apparatuses 1 to 6 with operation related information on the house apparatus in a certain period which is stored in a second storage unit 13. When it is decided through the comparison that the house apparatuses are used as usual, the operations of the house apparatuses are left as they are, but when it is decided that some house apparatus is used not as usual, the operation of the house apparatus is controlled to be stopped or switched to energy-saving operation. Consequently, such trouble that the house apparatus is left in the usual operation in the same way as the case where a person is present, while nobody is present, is effectively prevented. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a home appliance control apparatus that controls a device installed in a home.

There exists a thing described in patent document 1 as an apparatus control apparatus for houses. This is provided with a sensor for detecting the movement of the human body in the room, and controls the operation of a residential device such as an air conditioner installed in the room according to the operating state of the human body. According to this, when the operation of a human body is not detected, that is, when a residential device such as an air conditioner is operated when there is no person in the room, unnecessary operation of the residential device is stopped and wasteful power consumption Can be eliminated.
JP 2001-238272 A

However, in the device described in Patent Document 1, a sensor for detecting the motion of the human body must be provided for each room, which increases equipment costs.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described conventional circumstances, and an object of the present invention is to provide a residential equipment control device that can prevent unnecessary operation of residential equipment without providing a sensor for detecting the movement of a human body. To provide.

  According to the invention of claim 1, since the current usage status of the home appliance is compared with the driving related information for a certain period of time for the home appliance stored in the driving related information storage means, the correctness determination is made. The correct / incorrect determination corresponds to determination of whether or not the current use status is the same as the normal use status. Therefore, if the result of the judgment is correct, if it is positive, it is used normally, so the operation of the home equipment is left as it is. The operation of the home appliance is controlled such as stopping the operation of the vehicle or switching to a weak operation. For this reason, it is possible to effectively prevent the occurrence of a problem such that the house device is left in the same operation as when a person is present despite the absence of a person.

If the driving-related information for a certain period stored in the driving-related information storage means is one-day driving-related information, if the stored one-day driving-related information is Sunday information, the information is And the usage situation from Monday to Friday or Saturday going out to school is often different. For this reason, when the switch is forgotten to be turned off, there is a problem that the operation of the device is continued even if there is no person.
In this regard, according to the invention of claim 2, since the driving-related information for one week is stored, the current use situation can be compared with the driving-related information on the same day of the week. For this reason, generation | occurrence | production of the above malfunctions can be prevented effectively.

In the invention of claim 3, even when the current use situation does not match the stored driving-related information, it is determined to be positive if there is a mismatch within a predetermined range. Even when the user wakes up at the time and the use time of the home equipment is earlier than usual, there is no problem that the operation of the home equipment is stopped.
In the invention of claim 4, since the driving related information of the home appliance stored in the driving related information storage means can be updated according to the actual usage situation of the home appliance for a certain period, for example, it changes depending on the season Can cope with the living situation.

According to the fifth aspect of the present invention, since the operation of the residential device is stopped when it is determined that the use state is not allowed, it is possible to prevent a problem that the operation of the residential device is continued when there is no person.
In the invention of claim 6, when stopping the operation of the home equipment, the notification means notifies that the operation is stopped, and when there is no answer to respond to this notification, the operation of the home equipment is stopped. There is no risk of accidentally stopping driving when you are.
According to the seventh aspect of the present invention, when it is determined that the usage status is negative, a warning is issued to the outside, so that a security effect can be obtained.

  Hereinafter, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 2 shows an example of residential equipment in the house. The air conditioner 1, the television 2, and the lighting device 3 provided in the living room, the gas cooker 4 provided in the kitchen, the toilet 5 with a cleaning device provided in the toilet, A security sensor 6 is shown. The air conditioner 1 has a power switch and a remote control switch, and the remote control switch is provided with various switches as operation means, such as operation start and operation stop, temperature setting, operation mode (cooling, heating, dehumidification, etc.) selection. ing.

  The television 2 has a power switch and a remote control switch. The remote control switch is provided with various switches such as video display start / stop and channel switching as operation means. The lighting device 3 includes operation means such as a power switch and a brightness adjustment button. The gas cooker 4 includes operation means such as gas ignition and gas combustion intensity adjustment, and also includes a sensor that detects a gas flow to the burner. The toilet 5 includes a heater for heating the toilet seat, a washing water injection pump, and the like, and also includes a heater, a switch for turning on / off the pump, a sensor for detecting a water flow to the pump and the toilet flushing tank. The security sensor 6 detects the intrusion of a person due to window breakage or the like.

  Moreover, the above-mentioned residential equipment excluding the security sensor 6 includes a control device (control means) mainly composed of a microcomputer, a storage device (storage means) such as a flash memory, a wireless or wired communication device (communication means), An operation device (operation means) such as a switch or a remote control is provided. The control device for each home appliance has a clock function and measures the current calendar day (including day of the week) and time. The operation contents of various switches, in this embodiment, for example, a power source On / off, operation start, operation stop, various adjustments, and when the sensor is provided, the contents detected by the sensor are stored together with the calendar day (including day of the week) and time for a certain period, for example, one week. It has become. The operation content of the operation device and the detection content of the sensor stored in the storage means are referred to as usage status. Moreover, the control apparatus of the gas cooker 4 and the toilet bowl 5 alert | reports this immediately by a communication apparatus at the time of the detection of the water leak and gas leak by a sensor. When the control device of the security sensor 6 detects glass breakage or the like, it immediately notifies the communication device of this.

  FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an electrical configuration of the home appliance control device 7 according to the present invention. In the following, the home appliance control device 7 is simply referred to as a control device. As shown in FIG. 1, the control device 7 includes a control unit (operation control means) 8, an operation unit 9, a wireless communication unit 10, a wired communication unit 11, a first storage unit 12, and a second storage unit 13. The voice synthesizing unit 14, the display unit 15, the call control unit 16, and the like are connected.

  The control unit 8 has a function of controlling the overall operation of the control device 7, and is mainly composed of a microcomputer. That is, the control unit 8 includes a CPU, a ROM, a RAM, an I / O, a bus connecting these, and the like (all not shown). Among these, an execution program for operating the control device 7 is stored in the ROM, and temporary data and the like at the time of program execution are stored in the RAM.

  The operation unit 9 includes various switches and a touch panel provided on the screen of the display unit 15. The wireless communication unit 10 and the wired communication unit 11 communicate with the communication device of each residential device described above to acquire the usage state stored in the storage device from the residential device, and at the time of detecting a sensor abnormality, The abnormality detection signal notified from the equipment is received. The first storage unit 12 stores various items set by the operation unit 9, the user's mobile phone number input by the operation unit 9, usage status acquired from each home appliance, and the like. The 2nd memory | storage part 13 memorize | stores the driving | operation relevant information of each household appliance for a fixed period. The voice synthesizer 14 synthesizes a voice for warning to the user and outputs it from the speaker 17. The display unit 15 is composed of a liquid crystal panel or the like, and displays the contents of the operation of the operation unit 9 or displays the driving related information stored in the second storage unit 13 by the operation of the operation unit 9.

  In this embodiment, the driving-related information stored in the second storage unit 13 is the start and stop of operation of each home appliance for a certain period and the time (including calendar days). This driving-related information is updated based on the usage status acquired from each residential device each time the set update period elapses. At the time of this update, when the driving-related information of each household device stored in the second storage unit 13 and the driving-related information based on the usage status acquired from each residential device are in the same or similar range, Without updating, the operation information of each home appliance stored in the second storage unit 13 remains stored. The driving-related information stored in the second storage unit 13 is compared with the usage status acquired from each home device when the energy saving mode and the security mode are set, as will be described later.

  The operation unit 9 can set various items. The setting items are stored in the second storage unit 13 during the period of the driving related information stored in the second storage unit 13 (same as the update period). There are similar ranges, mode settings, etc. when updating driving related information. In this embodiment, it is assumed that the update period is set to one week, and the second storage unit 13 stores driving-related information (operation, stop, and time information) for one week. FIG. 6 shows an example of driving-related information of one residential device (the hatched portion indicates the driving period).

  Further, the call control unit 16 communicates with a transmission destination preset in the first storage unit 12, a user's mobile phone, a security company, a fire department, a police, a gas company, or the like according to a sensor that detects an abnormality. Connect via the network to report (reporting means).

Next, the operation of the above configuration will be described with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS.
(1) Updating driving-related information (learning)
The driving related information stored in the second storage unit 13 is updated every time the period set by the operation unit 9 elapses. The contents of control by the control unit 8 at the time of this update are shown in FIG. That is, in the case of the set update period, in this example, when one week of the update period elapses, the control unit 8 connects the wireless or wired communication units 10 and 11 to the communication devices of the home appliances 1 to 5. Then, the usage status for one week stored in the storage device is acquired (step S1; usage status acquisition means).

  Next, the control part 8 reads the driving-related information for one week memorize | stored in the 2nd memory | storage part 13 (step S2), and the one week acquired from the household equipment about each household equipment 1-5. Is compared with one week of driving-related information stored in the second storage unit 13 (step S3; comparison means). Then, based on this comparison, it is determined whether or not the usage status acquired from the home appliance can be used for updating the driving-related information (step S4; update permission determination means).

  This determination is based on whether or not the usage status of the residential device acquired this time is within the similar range set by the operation unit 9 with respect to the driving related information stored in the second storage unit 13. Depending on Specifically, this similar range is set by the time difference between the operation start time and the operation end time. For example, when this similar range is set to 1 hour, for each day of the same day of the week, the operation start time and the operation end time of the house device stored in the second storage unit 13 and the current time When the time difference between the start time and the end time of the operation of the acquired residential device is compared with one hour, it is determined that it is similar and can be used for updating.

When it is determined that it can be used (“YES” in step S4), the control unit 8 extracts the start and stop of operation and the time for each day of the week from the acquired usage status of the home appliance, and uses this as a new operation. As the related information, the driving related information in the second storage unit 13 is updated (step S5; updating means).
When it is determined that it is not used (“NO” in step S4), the control unit 8 discards the acquired usage status of the home appliance (step S6).

(2) Energy Saving Mode When the energy saving mode is set by operating the operation unit 9, the control unit 8 repeatedly executes the energy saving mode of the control content shown in FIG. 4 every predetermined short time. That is, the control unit 8 first connects the wireless or wired communication units 10 and 11 to the communication devices of the home appliances 1 to 5 and acquires the usage status for one week stored in the storage device (step). A1: Usage status acquisition means). Next, the control unit 8 reads driving-related information for one week stored in the second storage unit 13 (step A2; driving-related information acquisition unit), and for each of the residential devices 1 to 5, Of the usage status for one week acquired from the device, and the same time on the same day of the week as the current day of the operation related information for one week of the residential device stored in the second storage unit 13 The operation related information is compared (step A3; comparison means). Then, based on this comparison, it is determined whether the usage status of the home appliance is similar to the driving-related information (step S4; determination means).

  This similarity determination is performed based on the same standard as that of the similarity determination that is the basis for determining whether or not the driving-related information can be updated (similar when the difference between driving start time and stop time is within one hour). For example, the driving-related information of the same day of the week stored in the second storage unit 13 indicates that the operation started at x hour x minute and stopped at ○ hour o minute, as shown in FIG. If it is extracted from the usage status acquired from the home appliance this time that the operation started at the current time △ hour △ minute, as shown in FIG. 7B, the operation start time △ hour △ minute When the difference between x and x hours x minutes is within a predetermined time, in this embodiment, within 1 hour, it is determined that the usage status is similar to driving-related information ("YES" in step A4). If it is determined that the two are similar, the home appliance is regarded as operating normally, the energy saving process is not performed, and the energy saving routine of FIG. 4 ends.

  On the other hand, if it is extracted from the usage status acquired from residential equipment this time that it is operating at □ hour □ minute of the current time, as shown in Fig. 7 (b), □ hour □ minute is normal. When the operation stop time of the same day of the week is over one hour from the hour o minute, it is determined that they are not similar ("NO" in step A4). When it is determined that they are not similar, it is assumed that the operation is continued even though there is no person because the residential equipment is in a different usage situation than usual.

  And the control part 8 judges the necessity of transfer to energy saving mode (step A6; energy saving necessity judgment means). This is necessary because, for example, an operation that can detect the presence of a person is performed within one hour of the current time, such as a switch being operated to change the operation content of a residential device, based on the usage status. It is judged by whether or not. If the controller device has been operated within one hour, the control unit 8 determines that the energy saving transition is not allowed (“NO” in step A6), discards the acquired usage data (step A10), and returns. It becomes.

  When there is no human operation within one hour, the control unit 8 determines that energy saving transition is necessary (“YES” in step A6), and the voice synthesis unit 14 stops “○○ residential equipment. A process of outputting a warning sound such as “Is it OK?” From the speaker 17 is executed (step A7; notification means). When the user responds to this alarm by operating the operation unit (answering means) 9 of the control device 7 (“YES” in step A8), the control unit 8 does not shift to the energy saving mode. The usage status data is discarded (step A10), and the process returns. In addition, a response is good also as a structure which transmits a response to the control apparatus 8 by operating the operating device of each household apparatus.

  When no response operation is made to the alarm (“NO” in step A8), the control unit 8 transmits an energy saving mode transition signal to the home appliance (step A9; energy saving setting means), and then used. The situation data is discarded (step A10), and the process returns. Then, the residential device that has received the energy saving transition signal stops operating there.

(3) Security mode When the user goes out, the operation unit 9 is operated to set the security mode. The control contents in the security mode are shown in FIG. 5. However, since the control contents are the same as those in the energy saving mode in FIG. 4, the same control steps are assigned the same step codes as in FIG. The differences will be described below.

  That is, in step A6, it is determined that it is necessary to shift to the energy saving mode (“YES”), and when there is no response to the alarm sound (“NO” in step A8), the control unit 8 determines from the stored contents of the first storage unit 12. Then, it is confirmed whether or not the security mode is set (ON) (step A11). When the setting of the security mode is canceled (OFF) (“NO” in step A14), the control unit 8 transmits an energy saving mode transition signal to the target house device (step A13).

  If the security mode remains set (“YES” in step A12), the control unit 8 is connected to the user's mobile phone and / or security center to notify that the home appliance is in operation ( Step A14; alarm means). In this case, if the water flow sensor of the toilet detects the flow of water or the gas flow sensor of the gas appliance detects the flow of gas, this is also notified.

  Next, the control unit 8 determines whether or not an emergency response is necessary (step S15; emergency response necessity determination unit). The necessity of emergency response is stored in the second storage unit 13 in advance. For example, when the lighting device 3 is kept in operation (lighted), the emergency response is stored, and when the gas flow sensor detects the gas flow, there is no person. Nevertheless, since the gas is flowing, it is remembered that the emergency response is necessary.

  If the control unit 8 determines that an emergency response is necessary (“YES” in step A15), the control unit 8 notifies the security center of the abnormal state from the call control unit 16 (step A16; alarm means), and returns. It becomes. At this time, an energy saving mode transition signal may be transmitted to the target house device at the same time. When the gas cooker receives the energy saving mode transition signal, for example, the valve is closed to stop the gas supply to the burner.

  On the other hand, if it is determined that the emergency response is not possible ("NO" in step A15), the control unit 8 waits for the user to transmit an energy saving mode shift signal from the mobile phone and then sends the energy saving mode to the target house device. A transition signal is transmitted (step A17), and a return is returned. When the security sensor 6 detects an abnormality, the control unit 8 that has received the abnormality report immediately executes step A14 to notify the mobile phone and the security center.

  As described above, according to the present embodiment, when the residential devices 1 to 5 are used in a form different from the daily use form, especially when the operation stop is different from the daily use, the equipment 1 is used even though there is no person. Since it is determined that .about.5 is operating and the operation of the device is stopped, useless operation is prevented and energy saving can be achieved.

Also, when going out, by setting the security mode, you can notify the mobile phone and security center carried by the user when you forget to turn off the home device. .
Furthermore, even if you do not go out, by setting the security mode, if there is a gas leak, or if the glass window is broken, an alarm is issued or a security center is notified. Therefore, the security function can be demonstrated.

The present invention is not limited to the embodiment described above and shown in the drawings, and can be expanded or changed as follows.
The driving-related information stored in the second storage unit 13 is not limited to the start and stop of driving and the time of the driving, but may be all usage conditions acquired from residential equipment.
The driving related information stored in the second storage unit 13 is not limited to one week. Regarding the operation start and stop times, an average of a plurality of weeks may be obtained and stored as operation related information.

As the driving-related information storage means for storing the driving-related information, the control device 7 does not necessarily have to be provided, and may be obtained by communication from a storage device (driving-related information storage means) included in each residential device. .
The driving-related information stored in the driving-related information storage means may include the operation contents of various switches and the detection contents of the sensors, similarly to the usage situation acquired from the home appliance.
When it is determined that there are no people, the driving is not stopped, but energy-saving driving, for example, if it is an air conditioner, it may be reserved driving so that the room is at a comfortable temperature when returning home. You may make it switch to.

The block diagram of the electric constitution of the control apparatus which shows one Embodiment of this invention. Schematic showing an example of residential equipment Flowchart showing control contents during storage of driving related information Flow chart showing control details in energy saving mode Flow chart showing security mode control contents Time chart showing an example of one week use form of residential equipment The usage pattern of the same day of the week is shown, (a) is the usage pattern stored in the second storage unit, (b) is the usage pattern acquired this time

Explanation of symbols

  In the drawings, 1 to 6 are residential devices, 7 is a residential device control device, 8 is a control unit (usage status acquisition means, determination means), 9 is an operation unit (answering means), 12 is a first storage unit, Reference numeral 13 denotes a second storage unit (driving related information storage unit), 16 denotes a call control unit (alarm unit), and 17 denotes a speaker (notification unit).

Claims (7)

In a residential equipment control device for controlling residential equipment,
For the residential equipment, driving-related information storage means storing driving-related information for a certain period;
Usage status acquisition means for acquiring the usage status of the home appliance at time intervals;
When the usage status of the home appliance is acquired by the usage status acquisition unit, the acquired usage status is stored in the driving related information storage unit and the driving related information for the certain period of time for the home appliance is stored. Comparing means for comparing with driving-related information at the time corresponding to the usage status acquisition,
Judgment means for judging the correctness of the usage status of the home appliance based on the comparison result of the comparison means;
And controlling the operation of the home appliance according to whether the determination means is correct or not.   The residential equipment control device according to claim 1, wherein the driving-related information for a certain period stored in the driving-related information storage means is driving-related information for one week.   The determination means determines positive when the usage status matches the driving-related information, and also determines positive when the usage status does not match the driving-related information within a predetermined range. The residential equipment control apparatus according to claim 1 or 2.   The driving-related information of the home appliance stored in the driving-related information storage unit is configured to be able to be updated according to the driving acquisition status of the certain period acquired by the usage status acquisition unit. The residential equipment control device according to any one of claims 1 to 3.   5. The residential equipment control device according to claim 1, wherein when the judging unit judges that the use state is not allowed, the operation of the residential equipment is stopped. Furthermore, when the determination means determines that the use status is not, a notification means for notifying that the operation is stopped;
Answer means for making an answer to the notice of the notice means;
The home appliance control apparatus according to claim 5, further comprising: stopping the operation of the home appliance when there is no permission answer by the answering means.   The residential equipment control device according to any one of claims 1 to 6, further comprising a warning unit that issues a warning to the outside when the determination unit determines that the use state is not allowed.

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