US 5,861,822 AGranted

Wire/wireless keyboard, and control method therefor

AssigneeSamsung Electro-Mechanics Co., Ltd.

InventorsChan Kyung Park, Jee Sung Lee

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Abstract

A wire/wireless keyboard and a control method therefor. The keyboard can be used as a wire keyboard if a main body connecting section of the keyboard is connected to a computer body, and the keyboard can be used as a wireless keyboard if the main body connecting section of the keyboard is disconnected from the computer body. The connection status between the computer body and the main body connecting section of the keyboard is automatically judged. If it is judged that they are connected, then the power of the computer body is selected, and the wire mode is executed. On the other hand, if it is judged that they are disconnected from each other, then the internal battery is selected to supply the power from the battery, and the wireless mode is executed. Therefore, the keyboard can be used as both a wire keyboard and as a wireless keyboard. Particularly, under a wireless mode, only if there is a key inputting, the control section is waken up, and therefore, the consumption of the battery power can be minimized.

Claims13

Dependent claims

A wire/wireless keyboard comprising:

a key scanning section for scanning key data including numerals, letters and symbols;
a main body connecting section for receiving power from a computer body, and for transmitting and receiving various data and clock signals to and from the computer body through a wire route;
a wire/wireless detecting section for checking a power supply state of said main body connecting section to detect a connection status between the keyboard and the computer body;
a power selecting section for supplying power to the keyboard upon sensing a supply of power from said main body connecting section, and for supplying a battery power to the keyboard upon detecting no power from the computer body;
an ID number setting section for furnishing a pre-set ID number to a control section;
said control section receiving power from said power selecting section, judging as to a wire mode or a wireless mode based on status detection signals of said wire/wireless detecting section, controlling an output of scanned key data to said main body connecting section upon encountering a wire mode, and controlling an output of ID numbers and key data to a radio frequency transmitting section upon encountering a wireless mode;
and
said radio frequency transmitting section converting the data of said control section to radio frequency signals through a signal converting procedure.

5 more elements

A method for controlling a keyboard by using a radio frequency transmitting section, a key scanning section, an internal battery, a main body connecting section and a control section for discriminating a wire mode and a wireless mode, comprising the steps of:

carrying out a basic assurance test (first step);
discriminating a wire mode and a wireless mode based on a status detecting signal of a wire/wireless detecting section, setting "1" as a flag bit upon encountering a wire mode, and setting "0" as a flag bit upon encountering a wireless mode (second step);
receiving key data through a key scanning section (third step);
checking ghost keys among scanned key data, and controlling to disregard the ghost keys (fourth step);
judging as to whether said flag bit FB has been set or reset (fifth step);
executing a wire mode to wire-transmit the scanned key data upon finding that said flag bit has been set at the fifth step (sixth step);
executing a wireless mode to wire less-transmit the scanned key data upon finding that said flag bit has not been set at the fifth step (seventh step);
and
returning to the second step after executing the sixth and seventh steps (eighth step).

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.