Patent ID: 6873245

Claim:
An appliance controller for a distributed appliance system having a multiplicity of appliances, and a plurality of relay units, one of the relay units being the appliance controller and comprising: (a) a low power satellite radio transceiver having a range being less than a distance to at least some of the appliances; (b) an appliance interface for communicating with the at least one local appliance; (c) a microcomputer connected between the satellite radio transceiver and the appliance interface and having first program instructions for controlling the satellite transceiver and second program instructions for directing communication between the satellite transceiver and the appliance interface; (d) the first program instructions including detecting communications directed by another of the relay units relative to the same appliance controller, signaling receipt of the directed communications, and directing communications to the other of the relay units relative to the same appliance controller; and (e) the second program instructions including detecting relay communications directed between the another of the relay units and a different relay unit, transmitting the relay communications, detecting a reply communication from the different relay unit, and transmitting the reply communication to the other of the relay units, wherein at least some of the relay units communicate with others of the relay units by relay communications using at least two others of the relay units.