Patent ID: 9552743
Date: 2017-01-24
CPC Classifications: A46B,G09B

Claim:
1. A tooth brushing monitoring device for use with a toothbrush during tooth brushing, said monitoring device comprising: an input device for taking user inputs, an acceleration sensor for producing signals during tooth brushing, a signal conditioner receiving and processing signals from the acceleration sensor, said signal conditioner, while said toothbrush and monitoring device is used for brushing a predetermined or user indicated teeth region comprising a plurality of predefined teeth surfaces, identifies a brushing cycle based on a specific acceleration of a brush head of said toothbrush, and in response to an identified brushing cycle, said signal conditioner identifies the predefined teeth surface that was brushed with the identified brushing cycle based on an inclination of the monitoring device in gravity during the brushing cycle, and registers the identified brushing cycle of the identified teeth surface with a corresponding teeth surface specific counter, a memory for maintaining at least one teeth surface specific number of brushing cycles for each predefined teeth surface of each teeth region, a comparator which compares a number of brushing cycles registered by each of the teeth surface specific counters during brushing of the teeth region with the corresponding teeth surface specific number of brushing cycles maintained in said memory, and an output device which indicates that the brushing of the teeth region in question has been accepted, if the comparator indicates that the number of brushing cycles registered by each teeth surface specific counter during the brushing of the teeth region in question corresponds with a predefined accuracy with the corresponding number of brushing cycles maintained in said memory for the teeth region in question, wherein a longitudinal direction of said brush head defining a Y-axis, a direction of bristles of said brush head defining an X-axis, which is perpendicularly oriented as compared to the Y-axis, and a Z-axis is perpendicularly oriented as compared to the X-axis and the Y-axis, said signal conditioner subjects said signals from the acceleration sensor to a strong low pass filtering, said signal conditioner determines the inclination of the monitoring device in gravity based on a measured acceleration in the X and Z directions as indicated by the strongly low pass filtered signals, said signal conditioner subjects said signals from the acceleration sensor to high pass filtering for identifying a brushing cycle as Y-acceleration indicated by the high pass filtered signal.