Panasonic Corporation

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Takuhisa Ootani

Kouichi Ueki

Kazutaka Asano

Yasuo Koba

Hajime Miyata

Mitsuo Yokohata

Ryuji Iwamoto

Youichi Itou

Hirozumi Nakamura

Shigeru Murakami

Tsuyoshi Honda

Kouji Murase

Kazunori Ueyama

A flow rate measuring device simplifies calculation, reduces memory required for calculation, absorbs variations due to manual operation and, depending on the state of ignition, improves the accuracy of appliance identification by extracting features of appliances. The flow rate measuring device includes: a difference value conversion unit that converts into codes difference values of the flow rate measured at constant time intervals by an ultrasonic flowmeter; an appliance feature extraction unit creates an appliance feature code string indicating a feature of each appliance by, for example, making comparison and judgment using a third last code, a second last code, a last code and a current code of the codes obtained at constant time intervals, and by performing code deletion; and an identification unit performs appliance identification by comparing the appliance feature code string with an appliance inherent feature code string indicating the feature code string inherent in each appliance.

Flow rate measuring device

A newly-purchased gas appliance is detected and reported to a gas administrator. There are provided a flow rate detection portion, a flow rate calculation portion, a code extraction portion, an initial code learning portion, a code maintaining portion, a code judging portion, an additional code learning portion, and an external communication portion. The code extraction portion extracts a code pattern E. The initial code learning portion gathers similar code patterns E as a gas appliance code pattern F. The code judging portion judges whether or not the code pattern E matches any of gas appliance code patterns F held by the code maintaining portion within a predetermined range. The code patterns E that have failed to match are subjected to additional identification of a gas appliance in the additional code learning portion. The gas cut-off device can thereby let the additional code learning portion detect whether or not a new gas appliance has emerged and the external communication portion send a report to the gas administrator.

Gas blocking device

With a gas shutoff device in the related art, a non-uniform gas layer can be produced by mixing of a gas of a different type from the gas currently in use during a shift in the amount of heat or installation or replacement, and an unexpected flow rate may be detected due to a disruption in the propagation of ultrasonic waves, thereby causing an erroneous determination of a flow rate abnormality or a sensor abnormality. With the gas shutoff device according to the invention, a valve-closing timer sectionstarts to time based on a valve-closing signal which is output by the flow rate abnormality or the sensor abnormality, and outputs a valve-opening signal to a valve driving sectionif a release input is accepted from outside within a setting time period. Thus, even when the non-uniform gas layer is produced by mixing the gas of a different type from the gas currently in use during the shift in the amount of heat or installation or replacement, an unexpected flow rate is detected due to the disruption in the propagation of ultrasonic waves, thereby causing the erroneous determination of the flow rate abnormality or the sensor abnormality, and the valve is closed, the erroneous determination is resolved and the gas is available again within a given time period.

Gas shutoff device

An object is to prevent a mistaken shutoff caused by the mistaken registration of an appliance of which an amount of gas used changes. An individual flow registration maintenance unit maintains a registered flow rate deleted due to an increase/decrease in flow rate, again, performs determination on the flow rate maintained when a new flow rate is registered or a flow rate added with the maintained flow rate, and in the case where it is regarded to be the same, re-register the maintained flow rate.

It is an objective to appropriately assure a function of limiting use of appliances that cause changes in quantities of gas used. There are provided a flow detection unit; a flow computing unit; an average flow computing unit; a flow storage unitthat records an average flow quantity value; a flow change determination unitthat determines whether there is a flow change; a flow registration unitthat registers a flow quantity corresponding to a flow change or deletes a registered flow quantity close to the flow change when the flow change determination unithas determined an incremental or decremental change; a flow memory unit; a flow change correction memory unitthat, when the flow change determination unit has determined presence of a change and when only the maximum flow quantity is registered, determines whether or not a sum of registered flow quantities deleted in the past and an average flow fall within a predetermined range; a determination period unitthat, when no flow change is determined to have been for a predetermined time period, deletes flow quantities in the flow memory unit and the registered flow quantity, thereby performing re-registration; a monitoring value memory unit; an abnormality determination unitthat compares the flow quantity value in the flow registration unit with a determination value of the monitoring value memory unit, thereby determining presence or absence of an abnormality; and an operating time correction unitthat outputs a re-registration correction signal through use of a determination period unit.

Gas cutoff apparatus

To provide a flowmeter capable of enhancing metering resolution to thus effect accurate metering. When a fluid to be measured is supplied to or discharged from a metering chamber, a membraneprovided in the metering chamberis reciprocally actuated, and a rotation section Rperforms rotational movement in association with reciprocal movement of the membrane. At this time, since the rotation section Ris provided with a magnetor a direction sensor, the magnetor the direction sensoralso effects rotational movement. The direction sensordetects rotational movement, to thus determine a relative position between the membrane and the rotation section. Thus, the position of the membranecan be detected, and metering resolution is enhanced. Thus, accurate metering can be performed.

Growing community of inventors

Nara, Japan

Takuhisa Ootani