The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 18, 1984
Filed:
Sep. 21, 1981
Henry C Sibley, Adams Basin, NY (US);
General Signal Corporation, Stamford, CT (US);
Abstract
A vital timer for energizing a vital relay at the end of a preselected time interval generated by a vitally programmed microprocessor. Diverse time data words of the preselected time interval are generated, loaded into diverse registers within the microprocessor, and are incremented by means of a program loop for the duration of the time interval determined by the magnitude of the diverse time data words. The microprocessor includes checking routines for verifying that the selected time interval has correctly been read, that a microprocessor primary clock bears a predetermined relationship to an external auxiliary clock, and that the diverse registers maintain a predetermined count relationship for the duration of the preselected time interval. Checking routines produce plural predetermined checkwords indicative of vital timer performance, which checkwords are utilized to address an output program formed of groups of instructions each corresponding to a respective checkword, and each of which must be accessed in predetermined sequence in order to produce a predetermined time varying output to the tuned vital relay driver. Thus, the tuned vital relay driver is activated only in the event that each prescribed checkword is generated to verify failure free timer performance.