Patent Application

App. No. 14/705,917

Abstract

Claims (45)

1 . A method, comprising:

receiving, on a general purpose computer, data representing a device error code;

diagnosing the data representing the device error code using the general purpose computer;

determining, using the general purpose computer, whether or not to replace a device based on the diagnosing;

generating data representing a device replacement notice for the device when the device is to be replaced; and

transmitting the data representing the device replacement notice to an account associated with the device.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the data representing the device replacement notice constitutes data representing an electronic message.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the data representing the device replacement notice is transmitted in accordance with data representing a preferred mode of contact accessed from a customer preference database by the general purpose computer.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining further comprises the general purpose computer accessing data representing a customer profile.

5 . The method of claim 4 and further comprising:

applying customer profiling to the data representing the customer profile to determine if a number of customer service contacts exceeds a threshold number, and causing the generating and the transmitting when the number of customer service contacts exceeds the threshold number.

6 . The method of claim 4 and further comprising:

applying customer profiling to the data representing the customer profile to determine if the device constitutes a seeded device, and causing the generating and the transmitting when the device is a seeded device.

7 . The method of claim 1 and further comprising:

accessing a data store including data representing a number of instances for the data representing the device error code, and causing the generating and the transmitting when the data representing the number of instances exceeds a threshold number.

8 . A device, comprising:

A controller;

an input/output unit coupled with the controller; and

a memory coupled with the controller, the memory including an error logging algorithm having executable instructions fixed in a non-transitory computer readable medium,

the controller configured to execute instructions in the error logging algorithm to detect device error codes and to store in the memory, data representing device error codes that are detected,

the controller operative to cause the input/output unit to establish a communications link, and

the controller operative to cause the input/output unit to transmit the data representing the device error codes using the communications link.

9 . The device of claim 8 , wherein the communications link comprises a wireless communications link.

10 . The device of claim 9 , wherein the communications link is established with an external computing device.

11 . The device of claim 8 , wherein the controller is configured to accumulate the data representing device error codes in the memory and to transmit the data representing the device error codes, using the communications link, after a period of time has elapsed.

12 . The device of claim 8 , wherein the controller is configured to accumulate the data representing device error codes in the memory and to transmit the data representing the device error codes, using the communications link, after a number of device error codes have been accumulated in the memory.

13 . The device of claim 10 , wherein the device error codes that are communicated using the communications link are configured to be received by a backend system in data communication with one or more networked computing resources.

14 . The device of claim 10 , wherein establishing the communications link with an external device triggers transmitting of the data representing the device error codes via the communications link.

15 . A method, comprising:

executing, on a processing unit of a device, an error logging algorithm embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium;

determining, using the error logging algorithm, whether or not a device failure of the device has been detected;

logging, in a memory coupled with the processing unit, data representing a device error code for each device failure detected;

establishing, using the processing unit, a communications link with an external system the data representing the device error code; and

transmitting, via the communications link, the data representing the device error code to the external system.

16 . The method of claim 15 and further comprising:

accumulating the data representing one or more of the device error codes in the memory; and

transmitting, via the communications link, the data representing the device error code to the external system after a period of time has elapsed.

17 . The method of claim 15 and further comprising:

accumulating the data representing one or more of the device error codes in the memory; and

transmitting, via the communications link, the data representing the device error code to the external system after a number of the data representing the device error code has been accumulated in the memory.

17 . The method of claim 15 and further comprising:

performing a hashing function on the data representing the device error code.

18 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the performing the hashing function occurs prior to the logging.

19 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the performing the hashing function occurs prior to the transmitting.

20 . The method of claim 15 , wherein the communications link constitutes a wireless communications link.

Assignments (12)