Mobile phone to appliance communication via audio sampling
The present subject matter relates to systems and methodologies for communicating between an appliance and a mobile device using audio signaling. An appliance is provided with an audio generating device controlled by a processor to cause the audio device to produce encoded sounds. The sounds may correspond to a series of tones. The tones are sampled using the microphone in a smartphone or other mobile computing device and decoded by an application running on the smartphone or device to provide information and/or instructions to the appliance user.
1. An appliance communications system, comprising:
an appliance comprising a sound generating device, a network interface, and a processor; and
a mobile device comprising a microphone, a processor, and an output device,
wherein said appliance and said mobile device are configured to connect to a network;
wherein said appliance is configured to:
detect a change in a connection status between said appliance and said network; and
in response to detecting said change in said connection status between said appliance and said network, cause said sound generator to produce an audible signal; and
wherein said mobile device is configured to:
sample said audible signal;
determine a message based at least in part on said audible signal, said message indicating said change in said connection status between said appliance and said network; and
deliver said message from said output device.
2. A system as in claim 1 , wherein said message is an audible message.
3. A system as in claim 1 , wherein said message is a voiced message.
4. A system as in claim 1 , wherein said output device is a display device and said message is a visual message.
5. A system as in claim 4 , wherein said visual message is a text message.
6. A system as in claim 1 , wherein said mobile device is a smartphone.
7. A system as in claim 1 , wherein said audible signal is an encoded signal.
8. A system as in claim 7 , where said encoded signal is based on Morse code.
9. A system as in claim 1 , wherein said mobile device is configured to decode said audible signals based on oversampling of said audible signals.
10. A system as in claim 1 , wherein said mobile device is configured to decode said audible signals based on a lookup table.
11. An appliance communications method, comprising:
detecting, by an appliance, a change in a connection status between the appliance and a network;
in response to detecting the change in the connection status between the appliance and the network, generating, by the appliance, an audible signal;
sampling, by a mobile device, the audible signal;
determining, by the mobile device, a humanly perceivable message based at least in part on the audible signal, the humanly perceivable message indicating the change in the connection status between the appliance and the network; and
delivering, by the mobile device, the humanly perceivable message via an output device of the mobile device.
12. A method as in claim 11 , wherein the audible signal is encoded.
13. A method as in claim 11 , wherein the humanly perceivable message is an audible message.
14. A method as in claim 11 , wherein the message is a voiced message.
15. A method as in claim 11 , wherein the message is a text message.
16. A method as in claim 11 , wherein the mobile device is a portable computing device.
17. A method as in claim 16 , wherein the mobile computing device is a smartphone.
18. A method for providing network status indications from an appliance, the method comprising:
establishing, by an appliance, a connection to a local area network;
detecting, by the appliance, that the connection to the local area network has been lost; and
in response to detecting that the connection to the local area network has been lost:
obtaining, by the appliance from a memory of the appliance, a pre-defined code corresponding to a message, wherein the message indicates that the connection to the local area network has been lost; and
emitting, by the appliance, an audio signal containing the pre-defined code.
19. The method of claim 18 , further comprising:
receiving, by a mobile device, the audio signal containing the message;
employing, by the mobile device, a look-up table stored in a second memory of the mobile device to decode the pre-defined code and obtain the message.
20. The method of claim 19 , further comprising:
displaying, by the mobile device, the message in textual form on a display screen of the mobile device.