External contact connector
AssigneeApple Inc.
InventorsEric S. Jol, Albert J. Golko, Mathias W. Schmidt, Jahan C. Minoo
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A plug connector with external contacts is provided. The connector has one pair of contacts for transmitting data and one pair of contacts for receiving data. All data transmitted and received using the plug connector is serialized/de-serialized to enable data transmission at a very high rate. A corresponding receptacle connector has configurable contacts that are configured based on the orientation of the plug connector with respect to the receptacle connector. The receptacle connector may be included in a host device and has associated circuitry to detect orientation of the plug connector and to configure the contacts of the receptacle connector.
Claims8
A method comprising:
- detecting, by a host device, connection of an accessory to the host device, wherein the connection comprises a plug connector associated with the accessory being inserted into a receptacle connector associated with the host device;
- determining, by the host device, whether the plug connector is in a first orientation or a second orientation with respect to the receptacle connector;
- receiving, by the host device, a serialized data stream from the accessory, the serialized data stream including data associated with a plurality of data types;
- parsing, by the host device, the serialized data stream to separate data for each of the plurality of data types;
- and
- communicating, by the host device, the data of each type to corresponding circuitry within the host device.
An accessory comprising:
- a plug connector having only a first pair of contacts configured to transmit data and a second pair of contacts configured to receive data;
- and
- serializer/de-serializer circuitry coupled to the plug connector and configured to:
- generate first serialized data comprising audio, video, and other data and communicate the serialized data to a connected host device;
- and
- receive second serialized data from the host device and separate out individual data components from the second serialized data;
- wherein the each of the individual data components is communicated to an appropriate circuitry for further processing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.