Patent ID: 8910508
Filing Date: 2014-12-16
Classification: G01N,G06F

Abstract:
1. An apparatus comprising: a sensor module that monitors, using a sensor with a sensing material, an odor within a physical enclosure of a computing device, the physical enclosure comprising one or more components, the sensor comprising a metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (“MOSFET”), the MOSFET acting as a transducer that represents the odor as an electrical signal, wherein the sensing material comprises a gate of the MOSFET and odor molecules interact with gate material of the MOSFET to alter a threshold voltage of the MOSFET; a reference database comprising a plurality of reference alterations caused by the overheating component, each reference alteration comprising an electrical signal that corresponds with an odor, wherein determining that the odor within the physical enclosure is indicative of the overheating component comprises comparing an alteration in the sensing material with the reference database; a recognition module that determines that the odor within the physical enclosure is indicative of an overheating component that is overheating within the physical enclosure of the computing device, wherein the recognition module comprises an artificial neural network that compares the alteration in the sensing material with the reference database, wherein determining that the odor within the physical enclosure is indicative of the overheating component comprises determining that the alteration corresponds to one or more of the reference alterations in the reference database; and an alert module that initiates an overheating protocol in response to determining that the odor within the physical enclosure is indicative of the overheating component.