Patent ID: 8760307

Claim:
A monitoring system for monitoring a household electric appliance, the monitoring system, that is interposed between the household electric appliance and a power outlet, comprising: i. a read and write memory storing a plurality of measurements of a plurality of physical quantities relating to the household electric appliance within a predetermined time period during a treatment cycle; ii. a first interface means to connect to one or more sensors located on the household electric appliance for measuring said plurality of physical quantities of the household electric appliance, including one or more internal sensors for measuring internal physical quantities and one or more external sensors for measuring external physical quantities; iii. a means for measuring at least one electric quantity by measuring an electric current running from the power outlet through the monitoring system that is external to the household electric appliance; iv. a storage means containing one or more predefined values of at least one of said plurality of physical quantities; v. a microcontroller to process a particular combination of at least one of said plurality of physical quantities associated with at least one sensor of the one or more sensors located on the household electric appliance and the at least one electric quantity to determine values of an actual combination at an instant in time, the microcontroller being further configured to compare said values of an actual combination to one or more respective predefined values contained in the storage means to determine at least one piece of information, each predefined value being a threshold value against which one of the actual values is compared to determine a proper operation of a particular component of the appliance at that instant in time; vi. said microcontroller being further configured to adapt the operation of the household appliance; and vii. a second interface means to send the at least one piece of information to a remote center for storage.