Home information appliance system

A home information appliance system, comprising:

• a plurality of home electric appliances having various control programs corresponding to respective attributes of a plurality of articles and handling the articles in conformity with the control programs;
• a server connected to the respective home electric appliances by fixed lines and/or radio;
• a program distribution means capable of distributing the control programs to the respective home electric appliances;
• and
• a network capable of connecting the server and the program distribution means to each other,
• the respective home electric appliances comprising:
• an article detection section for detecting an article to be handled by the pertinent home electric appliance among a plurality of the articles;
• an information detection means for detecting information on an article detected by the article detection section to identify the article;
• and
• a control means for executing handling of the article in conformity with the control program corresponding to the article based on an identification result of the article, and requesting the server to download the control program corresponding to the identified article if the corresponding control program is not present,
• the server comprising:
• a storage means having a related appliances database including information on mutual relation among a plurality of the home electric appliances;
• a program download means for, in response to download requests from the respective home electric appliances, downloading the control program, which is for the home electric appliance requested the download and which corresponds to the identified article, from the program distribution means through the network;
• and
• a control means for distributing the downloaded control program to the home electric appliance requested the download, and making a reference to the related appliances database to distribute information on the identified article to home electric appliances related to the home electric appliance requested the download, wherein
• upon reception of information on the article distributed from one of a plurality of the home electric appliances, the control means of other home electric appliances determine whether or not a control program corresponding to the pertinent article is present, and request the server to download the corresponding control program if the control program is not present.