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:
Mar. 14, 2006
Filed:
May. 11, 2001
Erin M. Defossé, Austin, TX (US);
Arif Pathan, Austin, TX (US);
James L. Chaput, Austin, TX (US);
Isochron, LLC, Austin, TX (US);
Abstract
A method and system for communicating data between a network operations center and a remote device is described. Vending machine state information is communicated between a vending site and a network operations center using a delta scheme. A database, maintained by the network operations center, maintains a history of the activity of a variety of vending machines located at a variety of vending sites. To minimize the data needed to be transmitted between the vending site and the network operations center, the network operations center, in one embodiment, will request information from the vending site regarding the change in state of the various vending machines. The vending machines are responsible for restructuring a data block, calculating a delta for the change in state of the machine, applying a compression algorithm to the calculated delta and then transmitting the delta to the network operations center. Upon receipt of the delta, the network operations center can update the database by combining the delta with the previous state information stored in the database.