Patent ID: 8527688

Claim:
A docking station for a computing device, the docking station comprising: a power supply; an inductive signal transfer interface provided within a housing to inductively signal power and data to the computing device, the inductive signal transfer interface including (i) a structure having a center core and an outer structure, (ii) a power coil that encircles the center core and is positioned within the outer structure, and (iii) a data coil that is positioned closer to the housing than the power coil and does not overlap the power coil; an output component; and processing resources configured to: in response to the computing device being placed in contact with the housing of the docking station: (i) inductively signal an identifier of the docking station, via the data coil, to the computing device to cause the computing device to configure one or more modes of operations of one or more applications operable on the computing device based on the identifier; (ii) inductively receive data from the computing device over the data coil of the inductive signal transfer interface, the data including power information about the computing device; use the received data to establish an alternative connection with the computing device and to control output of power to the computing device via the power coil of the inductive signal transfer interface; and enable the computing device to use the alternative connection to signal an output to the output component.