Patent Publication Number: US-2018046156-A1

Title: Apparatus and method for controlling the noise level of appliances

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     Home appliances perform various cycles of operation, and users are increasingly interested in home appliances that reduce the total noise levels of a collection of two or more appliances at any given time. Enabling noise level control in appliances benefits user comfort. Previous noise management solutions have proven inadequate and hence the disclosed invention represents a significant improvement over the existing art. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     In one aspect, the invention relates to a home appliance having a controller configured to control at least two cycles of operation associated with a physical article in the home appliance, wherein a first cycle of operation has a first noise level and a second cycle of operation has a second noise level less than the first noise level. The home appliance includes a communication module for communicating with a second appliance over a peer to peer network. A processor is coupled with the communication module and the controller, wherein the processor is configured to determine, through communicating with the second appliance, a schedule to operate the first cycle of operation to reduce ambient noise level in the home. 
     In another aspect, the invention relates to a home network comprising a first appliance and a second appliance in a home. The first appliance is configured to perform a first cycle of operation associated with a physical article in the first appliance, wherein the first cycle of operation has a first noise level. The second appliance in the home is configured to perform a second cycle of operation associated with a physical article in the second appliance, wherein the second cycle of operation has a second noise level less than the first noise level. The first and second appliances are in communication with each other and one of them is configured to determine, via the communication, a schedule to operate the first or second cycle of operation to reduce ambient noise level in the home. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a schematic view of a system for controlling an appliance according to a first embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 2  is a schematic view of a system for controlling an appliance according to a second embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 3  is a schematic view of a system for controlling an appliance according to a third embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 4  is a flowchart representing the negotiation logic for a processor associated with an appliance. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       FIG. 1  is a schematic view of a system  10  according to the first embodiment of the invention. The system  10  includes at least two appliances  12  and  13  having receivers  14  and  15  in communication with each other via at least one peer to peer communication network, such as a Bluetooth pairing  18 . Peer to peer communication protocols other than Bluetooth may also be used. 
     The appliances  12  and  13  are illustrated herein as refrigerators, but it will be understood the system  10  may include any home or domestic appliances that perform a particular job in a home, including those relating to cleaning, cooking, or food preservation. The home appliances  12  and  13  may include a housing at least partially defining a treating chamber and having an open face selectively closed by a cover, such as a door, for providing access to the treating chamber. The treating chamber can receive one or more article(s), and the appliances  12  and  13  may treat the article(s) according to a plurality of useful cycles of operation. For example, in the case of a refrigerator, the treating chamber can receive one or more items of food, and the refrigerator can perform a cooling operation on the food in the treating chamber. While the appliances  12  and  13  are illustrated herein as refrigerators, other types of appliances and their various combinations are contemplated, including, but not limited to a freezer, a dishwasher, a range, a stove, an oven, a cooktop, a clothes washing machine, or a clothes dryer may be used with the system  10 . All of these examples of home appliances can receive one or more article(s), and can perform useful cycles of operation on the article(s). Other examples of appliance types typically found within a home and which may be used with the system include an air conditioner, a water heater, and a pool pump. 
     While only two appliances  12  and  13  are shown in  FIG. 1 , it should be understood that the system  10  can include more than two appliances. The appliances  12  and  13  can be located within a single home or at a common location. 
     The receiver  14  can be used to connect the appliance  12  to the receiver  15  of appliance  13 , and these receivers may be separate or external devices or it may be carried by or built into the appliances  12  and  13 . The receivers  14  and  15  can communicate with the appliance by a wireless or wired connection. The receiver  14  is associated with the appliance  12  for receiving signals sent via the Bluetooth pairing  18 . The receivers  14  and  15  can also have a transmitter, whereby signals from the appliance can be transmitted by the Bluetooth pairing  18  wirelessly. 
       FIG. 2  is a schematic view of a system  30  according to the second embodiment of the invention. The system  30  includes at least two appliances  32  and  33  having receivers  34  and  35  in communication with each other via at least one communication network, such as a local Wi-Fi network  38 . Wireless networking protocols other than Wi-Fi may also be used. 
     The appliances  32  and  33 , illustrated herein as refrigerators, may, like appliances  12  and  13 , be any kind of home or domestic appliances that perform a particular job in a home, including those relating to cleaning, cooking, or food preservation. Other examples of appliance types typically found within a home and which may be used with the system include an air conditioner, a water heater, and a pool pump. 
     While only two appliances  32  and  33  are shown in  FIG. 2 , it should be understood that the system  30  can include more than two appliances. The appliances  32  and  33  can be located within a single home or at a common location. 
     The receiver  34  can be used to connect the appliance  32  to the receiver  35  of appliance  33 , and these receivers may be separate or external devices or it may be carried by or built into the appliances  32  and  33 . The receivers  34  and  35  can communicate with the appliance by a wireless or wired connection. The receiver  34  is associated with the appliance  32  for receiving signals sent via the Wi-Fi network  38 . The receivers  34  and  35  can also have a transmitter, whereby signals from the appliance can be transmitted via the Wi-Fi network  38  wirelessly. 
       FIG. 3  is a schematic view of a system  50  according to the third embodiment of the invention. The system  50  includes at least two appliances  52  and  53  having receivers  54  and  55  in communication with a remote device  59  via a network  58 . 
     The appliances  52  and  53 , illustrated herein as refrigerators, may, like appliances  12  and  13  or  32  and  33 , be any home or domestic appliances that perform a particular job in a home, including those relating to cleaning, cooking, or food preservation. 
     While only two appliances  52  and  53  are shown in  FIG. 3 , it should be understood that the system  50  can include more than two appliances. The appliances  52  and  53  can be located within a single home or at a common location. 
     The receiver  54  and  55  can be used to connect the appliances  52  and  53  to the internet, and these receivers may be separate or external devices or it may be carried by or built into the appliances  52  and  53 . The receivers  54  and  55  can communicate with the appliance by a wireless or wired connection. The receivers  54  and  55  are associated with the appliances  52  and  53  for receiving signals sent by the remote device  59  via the network  58 . The receivers  54  and  55  can also have transmitters, whereby signals from the appliances can be transmitted to the remote device  59  via the network  58  wirelessly. 
     The remote device  59  can communicate information with and/or respond to requests from the appliance  52  and  53  from a remote location, typically outside of the home. The remote device  59  can include a data storage unit for storing data, such as historical usage or operational data for the appliances  52  and  53  based on information received. 
     The remote device  59  may comprise one or more server(s) which manages the appliances&#39; access to a centralized resource or service. For example, the remote device  59  may be a server of a manufacturer of the appliances  52  and  53  or some other third-party, and may communicate noise information similar to that from a utility provider. While only one remote device  59  is shown in  FIG. 3 , it should be understood that the system  50  may include multiple remote devices  59 . 
     The network  58  may be a private or public network, and may typically be a WAN (wide area network) such as the Internet. 
     In all embodiments of the invention described above, the appliances may have some infrastructure in place for mapping noise levels to their respective cycles of operation. This infrastructure may comprise an audio recording device and/or sensor  90  that actually records the noise levels emitted by each individual appliance during each specific cycle of operation. This audio device and/or sensor  90  may be physically built into one or more appliances or it may be a standalone unit installed in the home in some proximity to the appliances in question in the home. This noise level may be registered in one way by recording noise levels associated with each specific cycle of operation in number of decibels at a certain specific distance from the appliance. In addition, or alternatively, noise level information for cycles of operation of the appliance may be stored in memory on the appliance during the manufacturing process and/or updated periodically. 
     The audio recording device and/or sensor  90  may also be programmed to record the ambient level of noise in the home, when no noisy cycles of operation are being run by any appliance. This may serve the purposes of noting differences in ambient sound levels to detect the presence of users in the vicinity, thereby enabling a controller or a plurality of controllers  92  internally or externally situated with respect to the appliances, to regulate cycles of operation such that less noise is produced when users are in the vicinity. Alternatively, the input regarding user proximity may also be received by the user via an application on a mobile device such as a cellular phone etc., or via a website on the internet. 
     There also may be present a processor  94  for each appliance coupled to both the controller and the audio recording device and/or sensor, that gathers ambient and cycle noise data, and uses this data to schedule specific cycles of operation. This processor  94  may be an integral part of each appliance (as per  FIG. 1  and  FIG. 2 ), or may be part of the remote device (as per  FIG. 3 ). 
     As appliances may need to run various cycles involved in their operation in a certain sequence, there may be, based on the current states of the appliances, a communication involving a negotiation between two or more appliances based on these current states, as to a schedule for performing each individual appliance&#39;s operations. For example, with the existence of multiple appliances installed in a common area with each being aware of the others, negotiation for priorities as to which unit is permitted to turn on or to operate a given cycle at a given time and in what operational state at any given time can be managed to minimize sound. This negotiation may occur directly between appliances (as per  FIG. 1  and  FIG. 2 ), or may occur via the remote device (as per  FIG. 3 ). This negotiation protocol is illustrated in the flowchart  110  in  FIG. 4 . 
     In  FIG. 4 , the flowchart  110  illustrates a simplified representation of the logic process involved in the decision making for postponing or allowing a particular cycle of operation in a particular appliance at a particular time. According to step  112 , the processor  94  in an appliance in any one of the aforementioned systems receives signals from other appliances in the system regarding their current states and the cycles being currently run, signals from the audio sensors regarding ambient noise levels, user noise levels, and/or appliance noise levels associated with the specific cycles currently being run. This data may be entirely or in part be generated by the audio sensors on the appliances, or may at least in part be derived from archived and/or pre-programmed data installed into a memory unit of an appliance. Thus the total noise level in a space occupied by the system at any given time can be determined as a step  114 , in decibels, and can be represented as N sum . The noise level N sum  may represent a predicted or actual current noise level, and/or a predicted noise level for a given future time, based on scheduled cycles, and predicted patterns of user occupancy in the space. The processor  94  can then determine an acceptable noise threshold N thr  at the specific time in question based on pre-programmed values, or user-defined values, which may, amongst other things, depend on time of the day and user proximity to the appliances of interest. This determination can be executed in the logic sequence via a step  116 . A dynamic determination can be made to check if N sum &lt;N thr  via a step  118 . If it is found to be true (YES), the proposed cycle of operation can be continued by the appliance without interruptions according to step  120 . If the answer to step  118  is NO, then the system logic moves to step  122 , wherein the criticality of the operation is assessed. For example, in a refrigerator, parameters may be set to maintain a temperature of 40° F. in a defined space in the appliance. Therefore, the implementation of the cooling cycle becomes mandatory regardless of projected noise by continuation of the cycle. On the other hand, noise determination in N sum  may be an indicator of a fault in the appliance that the processor  94  can determine. In another example, if there were a detrimental accumulation of frost in a freezer at a given time, the control logic may determine the defrost cycle to be critical at a given time. If the determination from step  122  is YES, then the control logic moves to step  120  and continues the cycle of operation without interruptions. If the determination from step  122  is NO, then the control logic moves to a step  124  where the control logic determines whether the appliance in question is set to an “ignore” status. An “ignore” status may include the system being automatically or manually programmed to ignore the determination at step  118 . If the determination from step  124  is YES, then the control logic moves to step  120  and continues the cycle of operation without interruptions. If the determination from step  124  is NO, then the control logic moves to a step  126 , whereby it temporarily interrupts the cycle of operation. 
     The processor  94  may send instructions to the controller  92  based on the results of the control logic executed as described in the above paragraph, either through physical wires, or wirelessly. In the embodiments in  FIGS. 1 and 2 , these instructions may be received from dedicated controllers for the appliances. In the embodiment in  FIG. 3 , these instructions may be sent via the processor  94  located as part of the remote device  59 . In this case, the instructions would be directed to the specific devices of interest in the household, by using unique identifiers to recognize each individual appliance, such as the appliances&#39; MAC addresses. 
     In all embodiments, the processor  94  in a given appliance will know, either by the sensor  90 , or by historical output data recorded over time, or by the data stored at manufacture the expected noise levels of various components in the appliance. For example, an appliance (its motors and mechanisms) will typically operate at a set of different speeds. If two motors, fans, pumps, compressors, etc. were designed to operate at a specific speed for a given circumstance, there is typically a tolerance (+/−of that designed speed) at which the units will actually operate. If two similar units were to operate in the same space at the same time, they will typically not operate at the same speed, even if designed to do so and even if they operate within their tolerances. The result can be an extremely annoying “WOW-WOW-WOW” sound that may be amplified by harmonics, etc. In one aspect of the invention, an appliance, either in response to an already operating appliance or in negotiation with another appliance, may reset a target operational speed of the soon to be operating unit to be sufficiently separated from the other in order to minimize unwanted noise. 
     As well, an aspect of invention will consider that since appliances are in communication with each other, either directly or indirectly, it is possible for a first appliance to have apriori knowledge of a second appliance&#39;s noise data, historical operational data, and schedule for operation, if any. Consequently, the first appliance can establish a negotiation with the second appliance before the first appliance operates a cycle. Further, consider a scenario when the ambient noise is already minimal, such as when a baby is sleeping in the house. An appliance, having data about noise levels programmed at manufacture, a processor  94  that knows that operating a cycle will create a sound differential between the ambient noise level and the noise level during the cycle, may defer operation of the cycle until a smaller sound differential is possible. 
     While the invention has been specifically described in connection with certain specific embodiments thereof, it is to be understood that this is by way of illustration and not of limitation. Reasonable variation and modification are possible within the scope of the forgoing disclosure and drawings without departing from the spirit of the invention which is defined in the appended claims.