Apple Inc.

Alessio Centazzo

Syed Aon Mujtaba

Jianxiong Shi

Christiaan A Hartman

Sriram Hariharan

Michael Jason Giles

Camille Chen

Craig P Dooley

Langford M Wasada

Akshay Mangalam Srivatsa

William M Bumgarner

Siegfried Lehmann

Anjali S Sandesara

Andrew T Belk

Daniel R Fletcher

Donald Eng

There is a need to provide an intuitive way for a battery-powered device to send a low battery notification to another device that can properly notify a user that the battery-powered device has a low battery. The user can be notified by the other device even after the battery-powered device has exhausted its battery to the point where it can no longer report its battery state. A second electronic device (e.g., a remote control) can send a low battery notification to a first electronic device (e.g., a set-top box) so that the first electronic device can alert a user that the second electronic device has a low battery.

Method and system for remote battery notification

An interface circuit in a computing device may communicate with user-interface devices using shared slots during time intervals. In particular, the computing device may transmit outgoing messages to the user-interface devices at a first predefined time during sequential time intervals when the user-interface devices transition from a sleep mode to a normal mode. In response, the computing device may receive incoming messages from one or more of the user-interface devices at a second predefined time following the first predefined time during the sequential time intervals. Then, the computing device may transmit a multicast message to the user-interface devices at a third predefined time during the sequential time intervals. In response to the given multicast message, one of the user-interface devices may communicate data to the computing device. Note that, in some instances, a multicast time slot may instead be used to communicate data to one of the user-interface devices.

Simultaneous wireless connections with improved efficiency

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Alessio Centazzo