State cycling apparatus and method, and control circuit for a lamp

Abstract

A state cycling apparatus uses a capacitor instead of complicated and expensive microcontroller to fulfill a state cycling function of a system. The state cycling apparatus includes an internal circuit in the system connected to the capacitor. In a first embodiment, the internal circuit reads the voltage level on the capacitor at power on to determine a current state for the system, and writes the voltage level corresponding to a next state of the system to the capacitor. In a second embodiment, the system reads the state data stored in the internal circuit to determine a current state for the system at power on, the capacitor is charged during the system is under power on, and the capacitor provides power for the internal circuit to store a state data after the system is powered off.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.