Patent ID: 9466213
Filing Date: 2016-10-11
CPC Classification: G06F,G08G

Claim Text:
1. A system with energy management of visual capacity indicators for a facility, the system comprising: a controller; a plurality of indicator light devices (ILDs), wherein each ILD of the plurality of ILDs is connected via a network to the controller, each ILD of the plurality of ILDs is associated with a physical location and is configured to activate or deactivate a light source associated with each of the physical locations, and each ILD is coupled to at least one presence detector, wherein, for each of the ILDs in the plurality of ILDs, the corresponding at least one presence detector is configured to detect whether each of the physical locations associated with the ILD is occupied; a counting module operably coupled to the controller and configured to monitor an available supply of unoccupied physical locations in the plurality of physical locations; a non-transitory computer-readable medium operably coupled to the controller, wherein the computer-readable medium comprises a program of instructions that, when executed by the controller, cause the controller to perform operations to conserve power for the ILDs, the operations comprising: receive an available supply signal from the counting module, the available supply signal representing the available supply of unoccupied physical locations in the plurality of physical locations; determine, based on the received available supply signal, whether a percentage of all of the physical locations that are occupied meets a predetermined occupancy threshold; receive a presence signal from each of the presence detectors coupled to each of the ILDs in the plurality of ILDs, the received presence signals identifying which of the physical locations is occupied; if the percentage of all of the physical locations that are occupied meets the predetermined occupancy threshold, selectively activate, for each ILD of the plurality of ILDs, the light source associated with each of the physical locations that is not occupied; and, if the percentage of all of the physical locations that are occupied does not meet the predetermined occupancy threshold, deactivate all of the light sources of all the ILDs in the plurality of ILDs.