Philip Morris Inc.

Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.

Masato Sano

Charles T Higgins

Takahide Takeda

Tomonori Sakamoto

Kazuo Takada

Shunichi Kuriyama

Shigehito Uemura

Robert L Ripley

Barry Scott Smith

Grier S Fleischhauer

Michael L Watkins

D Bruce Losee

David E Sharpe

Seiichi Kawakami

H Neal Nunnally

Toru Morioka

Charles W Harris

J Robert Nelson, Jr

Marc R Chemla

Travel charger

Hand-held smoking unit

A novel controller in an electrical smoking system and method, wherein the method includes the steps of: establishing a preferred thermal pathway to be executed with each heater activation responsively to a puff on an electrically heated cigarette; configuring a power cycle in accordance with the desired thermal pathway; dividing the power cycle into at least first and second phases each having a respective, predetermined time period and total energy input for each phase; and adjusting a respective duty cycle (or other power-adjusting factor) in each phase of the power cycle responsively to a voltage reading of the power source such that the established, respective total energy input of each phase is achieved during the time period of each power cycle.

Power controller and method of operating an electrical smoking system

Charger stand

A cigarette identifier system comprising an infrared emitter and an infrared detector located across an opening of a cigarette receiver, wherein the sensor registers changes in the transmission of the infrared beam across the opening so as to detect the differences in transmissivity of dense and less dense and portions of an inserted cigarette.

Lighter actuation system

The current sensing circuit with automatic offset compensation is provided with a current sensing resistor, a difference amplifier which inputs this current sensing resistor voltage at its voltage measuring input terminal and inputs a reference voltage at its reference voltage terminal, and a measuring circuit which determines the current flowing in the current sensing resistor from the difference amplifier output voltage. The current sensing circuit adds a small bias voltage to the current sensing resistor voltage and inputs it to the voltage measuring input terminal to increase difference amplifier output voltage. The measuring circuit measures difference amplifier output voltage and compensates the reference voltage input to the difference amplifier reference voltage terminal to compensate difference amplifier output to 0V when current sensing resistor current is zero.

Current sensing circuit with automatic offset compensation

The charging apparatus for charging a secondary battery by controlling the charging current on the basis of the change with time of the voltage of the secondary battery through sampling of the voltage. The voltage of the secondary battery is sampled by use of a voltage/frequency converter which converts the voltage of the secondary battery to pulses of a frequency corresponding to the voltage and a counter which counts the converted pulses for a predetermined time with a predetermined cycle. The counting time of the counter is set to be larger than half a cycle of a commercial alternating current source used as a charging power source. Short duration fluctuations in the battery voltage due to charging power source variations are compensated for because the average voltage during this time is converted to digital values, thus making it possible to sample the voltage of the secondary battery correctly without being influenced by the change of the voltage of the power source.

Charging apparatus with battery voltage monitoring circuitry

Growing community of inventors

Sumoto, Japan

Masato Sano