Other

At&t Bell Laboratories

Cooper Technologies Company

At&t Information Systems Inc.

Paul Allen Howard

Gary Wayne Elko

Daniel A Quinlan

Jianming Yuan

Michael Douglas Manning

An enclosure and mounting system that provide ideal RF signal transmission and battery management for AMR systems utilized with a utility meter in a utility meter pit environment are disclosed. The AMR device includes processing electronics that receive consumption data from a pit-mounted utility meter, an antenna to wirelessly transmit signals from the AMR device, and an enclosure that houses the processing electronics and the antenna to provide protection thereto. The enclosure is configured to support different battery sizes and provide battery wire/connector management. The enclosure also defines a dome-shaped antenna compartment therein to house the antenna, the antenna compartment protruding out from a remainder of the enclosure so as to provide for positioning of the antenna at a location extended out therefrom. A companion adaptor utilized with the AMR device is mountable to a cover of the utility meter pit and increases a height of the antenna relative thereto.

System and method for battery management and antenna elevation in a pit mounted automatic meter reading unit

This heat recovery device replaces the floor drain in a common residential shower. A large circular pan joins flush with the shower stall floor and funnels greywater into the drain piping. The circular pan contains the heat transfer device which preheats the incoming cold water and recovers approximately half of the heat that would otherwise be lost. The incoming cold water travels through a water turbine where it rotates an impeller. The impeller is magnetically coupled with a rotary whisk. The rotary motion continuously washes the draining greywater over a spiral warming coil. The spiral coil transfers the heat to the incoming fresh water as it travels to the shower's mixing valve.

Greywater heat recovery with warm side agitation

A surrogate temperature sensor () for a convection cooled radiant heater system is described. The surrogate temperature sensor has an internal controllable heater () and a sensing device such as a thermocouple (). The surrogate temperature sensor is paired with a furnace/dryer radiant heat source (). The surrogate's internal heater provides sufficient power to heat the surrogate to the same temperature as the radiant heater. At least one surrogate temperature sensor () is positioned to be exposed to the cooling media in a manner similar to the radiant heat source. The surrogate sensor reports its temperature which is indicative of the radiant heater temperature to the cooling controller. The controller responds to this signal and adjusts cooling to maintain the radiant heater at its desired temperature.

Surrogate temperature sensor for a radiant heat source

A two-stroke internal combustion engine () is disclosed. Fuel efficiency is improved and extended over a wide power band by an inlet air valve () which controls the air charge and maintains a constant compression ratio. An integrated positive displacement supercharger () provides adequate air charge at all power levels and recovers compressor power from unused supercharged air. An integrated post combustion chamber () extends the power stroke by mixing combustion gases with ambient air for farther expansion and power production. Exhaust noise is reduced because the combustion gases are vented from the engine at lower pressure, lower velocity and temperature. The opposed cylinder design provides nearly continuous power by combining supercharger power recovery with extended power strokes.

Two-stroke opposed cylinder internal combustion engine with integrated positive displacement supercharger and regenerator

Option-equippable apparatus such as a computer that is not fully equipped with option circuit boards (14) has filler boards (15,16) connected to free board slots (13). In one embodiment, the filler boards (15) simulate the effect of circuit boards on airflow and act to evenly distribute the cooling air flow inside the computer cabinet (10) in order to provide improved cooling of the circuit boards. In another embodiment, the filler boards (16) block airflow between filler boards connected to adjacent board slots to direct more cooling airflow to any slots equipped with option circuit boards. The filler boards are made of electrically-conductive material (30) to absorb electromagnetic radiation emissions, and are covered with acoustically-absorbent material (33) to absorb sound emissions of the apparatus.

Growing community of inventors

Reston, VA, United States of America

Paul Allen Howard