Air control system for an air bed
AssigneeSelect Comfort Corporation
InventorsDavid C. Shafer, Eugene P. Duval
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An automatic control system for controlling the firmness of a fluid supported mattress of a bed assembly. The control system includes a motorized fluid pump, a control unit for operating the pump to adjust the firmness of the air mattress, a hand held remote control unit for actuating the control unit, and a transceiver system for transmitting information signals between the hand held unit and the control unit. The air control system provides for independent control of both bladders in a two bladder air mattress from a single unit, and allows a user to consistently set the firmness of each mattress air bladder to a desired value. The air control system includes an air pump specially designed to minimize transmission of motor noise into the environment.
Claims23
A method of repeatably selecting a known performance characteristic of a sleep surface, the sleep surface being supported by at least one fluid inflated bladder, the inflation of the at least one bladder being effected by a pump responsive to commands from a controller, comprising the steps of:
- assigning a progression of numeric values to a corresponding selected progression of fluid pressure values, each of the numeric values corresponding to a known fluid pressure value and representing to a user a certain performance of the sleep surface;
- displaying a user-selected numeric value on the controller;
- commanding the pump to adjust the inflation of the at least one fluid bladder to the fluid pressure corresponding to the user-selected numeric value by means of the controller, the certain performance of the sleep surface being repeatable by repeatedly selecting the same numeric value on the controller.
A controller for a sleep surface, the sleep surface having a variable sleep performance as perceived by a user, the sleep performance being related to the inflation of at least one supporting fluid inflated bladder, the inflation of the at least one bladder being effected by a pump, and a base unit being communicatively coupled to the pump, comprising:
- storage means for storing a progression of numeric values, each numeric value being related to a certain amount of inflation of the supporting fluid inflated bladder;
- display means communicatively coupled to the storage means for displaying a numeric value selected from the progression of numeric values;
- actuation means communicatively coupled to the display means for selecting a desired numeric value for display on the display means, the desired numeric value representing a known, repeatable measure of sleep performance of the sleep surface;
- and
- output means communicatively coupled to the base unit for providing a signal to the pump related to the numeric value selected for display on the display means, the base unit commanding the pump to adjust the inflation of the at least one bladder to a repeatable amount of inflation representative of the desired sleep performance of the sleep surface.
A controller for permitting a user to repeatably select a desired response of a sleep surface, the sleep surface being supported by at least one inflated bladder, comprising:
- storage means for storing a progression of numeric values, each numeric value being related to a certain amount of inflation of the at least one inflated bladder;
- display means communicatively coupled to the storage means for displaying a numeric value selected from the progression of numeric values;
- actuation means communicatively coupled to the display means for selecting a desired numeric value for display on the display means, the desired numeric representing a known indication of a repeatable response of the sleep surface;
- and
- output means communicatively coupled to a pump base unit for providing a signal to the pump related to the numeric value selected for display on the display means to command the pump to adjust the inflation of the at least one bladder to a repeatable amount of inflation representative of the desired response of the sleep surface.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.