US 9,000,934 B1Granted

Apparatus, method, and system for determining end-of-life of a product

AssigneeMusco Corporation

InventorsMyron Gordin, Timothy D. McGill

Life of this patent

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Abstract

Disclosed herein are apparatus, methods, and systems for assessing the life span of a product and/or system—particularly with respect to end-of-life conditions which are defined by a customer, owner, operator, or other person(s) associated with the product and/or system—and communicating the assessment to said customer, owner, operator, or other person(s). According to one aspect, end-of-life conditions are defined in terms of product life (e.g., anything that relates to how well and how long the product/system operates) and/or economic life (e.g., anything that relates to the cost of deriving a benefit from the product/system). In one particular example, the products or systems relate to lighting systems, particularly those utilizing LED (or other solid-state) light sources.

Claims22

Dependent claims

An apparatus for monitoring an electrically powered system comprising:

a. at least one electrically powered component in a circuit in operative connection to an electrical power source;
b. a processor;
c. a user input associated with the processor adapted to modify information stored in a digital memory which includes information relating to at least one operating factor and at least one economic factor of the component or electrically powered system;
d. a program associated with the processor which includes a first defined end of life condition for the component based on the at least one operating factor and a second defined end of life condition for the component based on the least one economic factor, the program adapted to modify either or both of the first and second defined end of life conditions based on user inputted changes to the information;
e. at least one sensor providing a sensor output related to a said operating factor or economic factor;
f. the program comparing at least one of the information and the sensor output to at least one of the first and second defined end of life conditions and, if indicated, taking an action based on the comparison;
g. so that an indicated action based on monitoring for a user inputted and updatable end of life condition can be provided for the system.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.