Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Norio Sugiyama

Masahiro Sakamoto

Teruyuki Nishii

Katsutoshi Ushida

Sadasuke Kurahayashi

Yuichi Naoi

Keiji Harada

Noboru Hada

The technique of the present disclosure has an object to perform PWM control of DC motors with a CPU and a motor drive circuit connected by a smaller number of serial interfaces, and provides a motor drive circuit comprising: energization control units to switch the directions of energization of motors by using switching elements to be driven by PWM signals; a reception unit to receive data indicating energization of the motor and the duty ratio of the PWM signal for each energization control unit from a computation apparatus by serial communication; a first signal generation unit to generate a motor control signal for controlling energization of the motor and the duty ratio based on the data for each energization control unit; and a second signal generation unit to generate the PWM signal having the duty ratio set according to the corresponding motor control signal for each energization control unit.

Motor drive circuit, method of controlling same, and storage medium

An image processing apparatus or a facsimile apparatus or the like is constructed by an input unit for inputting image data, a data conversion unit for converting density characteristics of image data inputted by the input unit, and an output unit such as ink jet printer, laser beam printer, or the like for outputting the image data at a predetermined resolution. The data conversion unit converts density characteristics so as to almost equalize densities even when a resolution of the image data that is outputted by the output unit differs. The data conversion unit converts the density characteristics of the input image data on the basis of a luminance/density conversion table formed every resolution of the image data that is outputted by the output unit. The resolution of the output image data is higher than the resolution of the input image data.

Image processing apparatus and method

When a received image is printed out in a facsimile apparatus, it is determined whether ink remains in an ink tank. If no ink remains, the image is reduced in size and is printed out upon adding a footer mark thereto. The recorded density of the footer mark is sensed by a photosensor and it is judged that there is too little ink left for printing if the detected density is less than a predetermined level. Thus, the footer mark is added on and sensed only when there is very little ink remaining. This eliminates the need for reducing the size of the image unnecessarily and therefore prevents a deterioration in image quality. Furthermore, since whether or not there is actually any ink left for printing is detected, no longer will an ink tank still containing some ink be replaced unnecessarily. This prevents ink from being wasted.

Image recording method and apparatus

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Fujisawa, Japan

Norio Sugiyama