Method of operating a smart home appliance
AssigneeHaier US Appliance Solutions, Inc.
InventorMichael Goodman Schroeder
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method of operating multiple home appliances within a smart home set up, including monitoring physical interactions with at least one appliance and measuring an amount of time since the interaction. The smart home network can activate a vacation mode including altering one or more operating modes of the appliance or alert a user via a mobile device to initiate a vacation mode.
Claims18
A method of operating an appliance, the appliance comprising an interactive user interface, a timer, and a sensor in communication with the interactive user interface and the timer, the method comprising:
- obtaining a predetermined time threshold;
- determining that the interactive user interface has been triggered;
- initiating a timer sequence via the timer in response to determining that the interactive user interface has been triggered;
- determining that the timer sequence has elapsed the predetermined time threshold;
- directing an emission of an input request to a user in response to determining that the timer sequence has elapsed the predetermined time threshold, the input request comprising a prompt to enter a predetermined operating mode;
- receiving an input response from the user to enter the predetermined operating mode;
- and
- implementing a responsive action in response to determining that the timer sequence has elapsed the predetermined time threshold, wherein the responsive action comprises adjusting one or more settings of the appliance.
An appliance system, comprising:
- an appliance, the appliance being operated according to one or more settings;
- an interactive user interface provided on the appliance;
- a sensor provided within the appliance for sensing a triggering of the interactive user interface;
- a remote device in communication with the appliance via a network;
- and
- a controller in communication with the interactive user interface and the sensor, wherein the controller is configured to perform a series of operations, the series of operations comprising:
- obtaining a predetermined time threshold,
- determining, via the sensor, that the interactive user interface has been triggered,
- initiating a timer sequence in response to determining that the interactive user interface has been triggered,
- determining that the timer sequence has elapsed the predetermined time threshold,
- determining that the remote device is outside of a predetermined distance from the appliance in response to determining that the timer sequence has elapsed the predetermined time threshold,
- implementing a responsive action in response to determining that the timer sequence has elapsed the predetermined time threshold, the responsive action comprising adjusting the one or more settings of the appliance from a standard operating mode to an adjusted operating mode,
- determining that the remote device is inside the predetermined distance from the appliance after adjusting the one or more settings of the appliance, and
- directing an emission of an input request to the remote device to restore the one or more settings of the appliance to the standard operating mode.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.