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:
Aug. 08, 1989
Filed:
Dec. 09, 1987
Bobby J Smith, Knoxville, TN (US);
North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., Knoxville, TN (US);
Abstract
A reconfigurable remote control apparatus and method for capturing the signals of transmission devices of at least two different protocols are provided. Because transmission devices either output signal bursts of different lengths at a carrier frequency followed by pauses of different lengths, or pulses of a relatively constant length followed by pauses of different lengths, a first determination is made as to the type of system being captured. After the system type is determined, the carrier frequency and the burst and pause lengths are determined for a burst type system, while only the pause lengths are determined for a pulse-pause type system. The captured information is preferably compressed according to a preferred compression scheme which finds and stores all possible signal lengths and all permitted adjacent signal length combinations for a particular apparatus, and composes and stores a compressed code which acts as a pointer to the stored signal length combinations. A further aspect of the invention is that a user need only press the keys of the remote unit to be captured during the capturing sequence and is prompted to do so by the apparatus of the invention.