WO2001031621A1

WO2001031621A1 - Kinetic display-arrangement and use thereof

Info

Publication number: WO2001031621A1
Application number: PCT/IB2000/001548
Authority: WO
Inventors: Dieter SCHÄFER; Valentin B. Spiess
Original assignee: Schaefer Dieter; Spiess Valentin B
Priority date: 1999-10-29
Filing date: 2000-10-26
Publication date: 2001-05-03

Abstract

The invention relates to a display arrangement for portable objects, such as a wristwatch, which provides an image to a viewer in the form of a dot matrix. The surface of the display required to produce the indicated matter only makes up a fraction of the image surface. The display consists of a row or narrow matrix of display elements, preferably light sources (1) in the form of dots. The individual columns of the image or text in dot matrix form are output sequentially to the display elements, synchronised with the movement of the display so that the human eye registers the sequence of individual columns as an image. The momentary position of the display required for correctly representing the image is calculated by a control unit (3) based on the movement measured by a sensor (2), especially based on the acceleration. An important aspect of the inventive configuration is that the visual display functions in two directions, i.e. the image and/or the text is/are reproduced in both directions of movement.

Description

Kinetic display arrangement and its use

description

Introduction and state of the art

The present invention relates to a moving display, in particular a luminous display for displaying text and image data, in particular text sequences and graphics. Such a display according to the invention is to be referred to below as a kinetic display or kinetic display. Such a display arrangement is particularly suitable for use in a portable watch, that is to say a pocket or wrist watch, in order to display the time, date or any other data. The display according to the invention can also be used as, possibly an additional, display of a mobile telephone or a PDA and other portable data storage or transmission devices, with which only the most important applications are mentioned. The kinetic display arrangement according to the invention will be used wherever an integrated display is required or useful, which can display any text sequences or graphics in the smallest possible space.

Known illuminated displays for displaying text, graphics or images generally consist of a discrete number of pixels, so-called pixels, which are usually arranged in the form of a matrix. The number of pixels results from the product of the number of rows and the number of columns; this number determines the size and resolution of the displayable text or image data. Displays are also known in which continuous text and / or images are represented as a treadmill, so to speak. But even here the size of the text or image shown is determined by the number and arrangement of the pixels.

In the following, a distinction should no longer be made between rows and columns, since these are defined by the orientation of the pixel matrix and are technically equivalent. In order to keep the effort for the control of the individual pixels within limits, the pixels are usually implemented as a logical AND link between row and column. A pixel is then activated, ie it changes its brightness exactly when both its row and its column are activated. This means that the image can no longer be displayed as a whole at the same time, but the individual lines are shown sequentially. However, due to the sluggishness of the human eye, which does not perceive the process as a sequence of individually reproduced lines, but perceives a standing overall picture, this sequential representation is irrelevant. Displays of this type are manufactured industrially in various designs and belong to the state of the art.

However, the display using the known displays becomes problematic as soon as only limited space is available, since then given the information to be displayed, it can either be shown only sequentially in sufficient size or only so small that optical enlargements for the

Considerations are necessary. Nevertheless, a certain minimum size of such an advertisement is required in order to be able to display legible information at all. For the representation of a number or a letter, a minimum number of pixels depending on the desired resolution is required - a single pixel line is not sufficient.

The invention

The object that is to be achieved with the present invention is the realization of a display, the physical extent of which only makes up a fraction of the dimensions of the displayed image. It can e.g. be integrated into a watch or other portable device or object that is smaller than the image to be displayed.

In principle, this task is solved by a novel use of the movement of the object, for example a wristwatch, and the sluggishness of the eye. In short - and somewhat unsharp - said, the invention can be a moving column of one or more lines of text or controlled in a certain way Image are understood, the column must at least consist of a number of pixels. Details of the invention can be found in the following description of the principle and some applications and exemplary embodiments, features of the invention can be found in the patent claims.

Detailed Description of an Embodiment and Some Applications A particularly illustrative application of the invention is a wristwatch. The functionality of such a watch is further expanded by a wireless interface, which can be implemented in an implementation described below. It enables the owner to load short texts or graphics he has written into the watch and to display them as required via the integrated light indicator.

Exemplary embodiments will be described in more detail below with reference to the drawings and some applications of the invention will be outlined so that they can be easily implemented by a person skilled in the art with the present technology. Show in the drawings

1 is a view of a first implementation of the invention,

2 shows the view of a second implementation of the invention, FIG. 3 shows the basic diagram of a control according to the invention,

Fig. 4 is a detailed representation of a control, and

Fig. 5 shows the state diagram of the movement evaluation.

In the following description, the term column by line or width by length can be replaced.

A first implementation of the invention is the wristwatch shown in simplified form in FIG. 1 with an integrated kinetic light display according to the invention. 2 shows the principle of the corresponding circuit.

On the one hand, the watch has a pair of hands that can be read in the usual way. On the other hand, a row of light-emitting diodes 1 is arranged on the dial, ren function is described in more detail below. An acceleration sensor 2 and a microcontroller 3, together with the necessary and associated connections, respectively, are located within the housing, that is usually not visible. Components and a power supply arranged.

The display process can be started when a critical speed is reached, the speed being obtained by integrating the acceleration. The microcontroller calculates a relative instantaneous position of the display by integrating the acceleration twice. This position is mapped to the index quantity of the columns using a suitable function (linear transformation and rounding). The microcontroller now reads the column belonging to the index from its memory and outputs it to the outputs belonging to the display elements. This process works in both directions. In order for a viewer to be able to grasp the image content or, in particular, the displayed text, it is usually necessary to repeatedly sweep the image area with the illuminated display. In order to increase the accuracy of the position determination and thus the display quality, the acceleration can be measured and evaluated in more than one, in particular in all three axes.

If the illuminated display, as shown in FIG. 1, is embedded in the dial of an analog watch, the watch is preferably to be provided with a device which, when the illuminated display is used, allows the hands to be set in such a way that they do not impair the display , For example, the pointers can move to a fixed position, e.g. To put quarter after six, so that the LEDs are not covered by the pointer and the visibility of the light indicator is ensured.

The watch can also include an interface, which - preferably wirelessly - enables the owner to load short texts or graphics he has written into the watch and output them at will via the integrated light indicator. The microcontroller 3 serves as a control unit; its working cycle is generated by a quartz oscillator 4, which is also the time standard for the clock. The acceleration sensor 2, which is designed as an integrated system, is used to record the movement of the clock. This generates a change in the pulse width of a clock signal which is proportional to the acceleration and is supplied by an oscillator integrated in the sensor. The pulse duration is measured by a timer integrated in the microcontroller and is available as a digital value for further evaluation. As shown in FIG. 1, the measuring axis AA lies in the direction of the intended movement of the watch, that is to say approximately transversely to the alignment of the row of light-emitting diodes 1.

The display is, as shown in Fig. 1, embedded in the dial of the watch. It preferably consists of 8 to 24 point, i.e. small-area, lined up display elements, here in particular light emitting diodes. The dimensions of the complete display are preferably between 12 and 24 mm in length and 1 to 4 mm in width. As shown in FIG. 2, the individual light-emitting diodes are connected to the outputs (I / O ports) of the microcontroller 3 via commercially available drivers 5. The energy required for operation is preferably supplied by a likewise commercially available battery 6.

The information to be displayed, such as the time, date or any message, is available as a dot matrix with a fixed number of lines and a variable number of columns, hereinafter referred to as an image. This is stored in the memory of the microcontroller 3. The number of lines is identical to the number of display elements if only one row of elements is used. The number of columns required depends on the size of the image, but a ratio of 1 to 6 columns per line is advantageous. A ratio of 6 columns per line is equivalent to a height / width ratio of the image of 1: 6. If this ratio is exceeded, the microcontroller divides the information to be displayed into individual parts which are displayed sequentially. The individual parts can then preferably be displayed during 2 or 3 movement periods. Since it is often difficult for people to take up large amounts of information in their entirety, for example, can hardly remember the given time, the viewer is sequentially first shown the time and after three periods, for example, the date.

The clock can be operated with the input buttons 7, e.g. set the time or activate certain functions. This can also include activation of the display. Functional details of the invention are explained below in connection with the other figures.

Such a watch can also be modified so that it is based on the usual displays, i.e. Pointer in analog or liquid crystal displays in digital clocks, completely dispensed with and exclusively with a kinetic display, preferably as a light indicator. The then only extremely narrow display line enabled a completely new design of a portable watch, which could be designed, for example, as a small stick, the display extending across the entire width of the watch band, but also being arranged diagonally to it could. Due to the small space requirement, there are hardly any limits to the implementation in jewelry objects.

A realization of the invention in this direction is shown in FIG. 3. This shows a display module that, together with a clock functionality implemented using software or firmware, results in a clock with an integrated kinetic display. No further display is provided in this embodiment.

A series of display elements 11, e.g. red LEDs, an accelerometer or sensor 12, whose measuring axis B-B is perpendicular to the alignment of the LED and a control unit, e.g. through a microcontroller 13, are the main components of the display module. To operate the clock, i.e. To activate the display or to change the clock settings, control buttons 14 can also be provided.

Further applications arise when using or integrating a display according to the invention into small, portable devices such as PDAs or cell phones. There- in the display could preferably be arranged on the back of the device, the display line extending in the longitudinal direction of the device. In this way, received or stored information, for example, can be displayed much larger than is currently possible with built-in displays. A user of a cell phone or PDA equipped in this way could even make the texts or images received or entered by the device visible to an audience. On the basis of the present description, the person skilled in the art will have no difficulty in making the necessary modifications to the arrangements shown or to the circuits indicated.

FIG. 4 shows the diagram of the internal circuitry of the display module of FIG. 3 in full. The control unit IC1 is a commercially available 8-bit microcontroller with a 32.768 kHz subclock oscillator such as the uPD78F9046 from NEC. 4 also shows the usual connection drawings of this microcontroller, which are familiar to the person skilled in the art. The 32.768 kHz quartz Q1 is the time standard from which the current time and date are derived. An acceleration sensor IC2 designed as an integrated system is used to record the movement of the clock. Such acceleration sensors are available on the market as series products; The ADXL210 sensor used here comes from Analog Devices and generates pulses whose width changes in proportion to the acceleration. The frequency of the pulse sequence defined by the resistor R3 is approximately 200 Hz. The width of the individual pulses is measured by a 16-bit counter integrated in the microcontroller and is available as a digital variable for further evaluation. The measuring axis lies in the direction of the intended movement of the watch, that is to say transversely to the orientation of the display elements, as shown in FIG. 3. These elements are here 24 light-emitting diodes D2 to D25, which, strung together, represent a column of the image to be reproduced. The distances and the number of lighting elements used determine the max. Width of the reproduced image fixed, in the present example 40 mm with a point spacing of 1.7 mm. The entire module is preferably powered via two small LR44 alkaline-manganese button cells. The resulting supply voltage of 3 V allows the light-emitting diodes, as can be seen from the diagram, to go straight through to control the outputs of the microcontroller. Since the acceleration sensor requires a stabilized supply of at least 3 V, a step-up regulator was provided. Shown in FIG. 4 as IC 3, an S-8430 AF from Seiko-Instruments was used.

In order to keep the clock running as long as possible, the module's power consumption must be kept low, especially when the display is not in use. This is achieved on the one hand by switching off the switching regulator and the acceleration sensor, on the other hand by switching off all current consumers that are not necessary for the clock to function. As a shutdown

The criterion can be the lapse of a fixed period of time, e.g. one minute since the last activation of the display.

In order to be able to display information again after a temporary shutdown, the module must therefore first be activated. In the present implementation, this is done by briefly pressing the K1 key, which causes the microcontroller to reactivate the previously deactivated components.

An interface can be implemented as a wireless IR interface, formed by an IR diode D1 together with R5 for the reception path. One of the LEDs D2 to D25 is used for the return journey. A serial EEPROM (IC4) is used to store the information. This is a two-wire I ² C interface connected to the microcontroller.

In principle, the module shown in FIG. 4 works as follows: The information to be displayed, such as the time, date or any message, is present as a dot matrix with a fixed number of lines and a variable number of columns, hereinafter referred to as an image. In the implementation shown, a monochrome grid (BitMap) stored in the RAM of the microcontroller is used, but in principle multicolored representations are also possible. In the present implementation, the maximum image size is 16x96 or 24x64 pixels, which takes 192 bytes out of a total of 512 bytes of RAM. The functional principle is simplified to reproduce the following: The display process is started when a critical speed is reached, this speed being obtained by integrating the acceleration. The microcontroller calculates a current relative position of the display by integrating the acceleration twice. This position is mapped to the index quantity of the columns using a suitable function (linear transformation and rounding). The microcontroller now reads the column belonging to the index from the memory and outputs it to the outputs belonging to the display elements. This process works in both directions. In order for a viewer to be able to grasp the image content or the displayed text, it is usually necessary to repeatedly sweep over the viewing area with the illuminated display.

Detailed description of the function of the software The principle of operation of the acceleration sensor is based on a spring suspended test mass, the deflection of which is proportional to the force acting on this mass. However, since the heavy mass is equivalent to the inertial mass, the influence of earth's gravity, depending on the direction of the gravitational field and the position of the measuring axis of the module, causes a considerable error if the measured acceleration values are only integrated. Therefore, measures to correct the influence of gravity are necessary in order to obtain a useful display.

The following measures were taken in the present implementation: • Estimation of the initial value,

• Regulation of the index speed and

• Periodic correction / update of the column index.

The following variables or variables are used in the following description of the entire process:

Asn for the filtered acceleration,

Vsn for the speed change, an for the acceleration, aO for the offset of the acceleration, ac for the dynamic correction of the speed error, vs for the target speed, vsa for the amplitude of the target speed, vn for the relative speed, iv for the relative index speed and ix for the relative position

The core function of the display is the motion-dependent output of the individual image columns stored in the memory. Essentially, this involves the integration of the size iv (index speed), which is proportional to the relative speed vn. The size vn is ideally exactly proportional to the real relative speed of the display in the measuring axis, which is preferably transverse to the orientation of the display. The integer part of ix is the current column index, which indicates the current column.

This function is implemented as follows: The following steps are carried out with a fixed frequency of around 10 kHz: iv is added to the size ix. If the integer part of ix changes, if this is in the permissible index range, the corresponding column is output to 16 or 24 LEDs depending on the image size. The LEDs are activated for a fixed time of 1 ms, which ensures uniform brightness of the individual pixels.

A separate process is responsible for the preparation of iv and the initialization and correction of ix. This process has six states, which can be seen from the state diagram in FIG. 5.

The signal flow looks like this. The acceleration sensor delivers 200 pulses per second, the width of which is measured using the internal 16-bit counter. An average value is formed from four successive measured values, which is then further processed. This is subsequently referred to as records. Next, the two auxiliary variables asn and vsn are calculated. The auxiliary variable asn is obtained by filtering on through a non-recursive bandpass filter. Its job is to remove the offset caused by gravity and the principle of operation of the sensor. The sum of the last ten values of asn results in vsn.

The velocity vn is obtained by numerically integrating (an-aO + ac), where aO is an offset and ac is a dynamic correction. This correction ac is the manipulated variable of a simple P controller, the setpoint of which is vs and the actual variable is vn. The controller has only a small guide transmission because a small value of 0.25 was selected for the gain KP. The column velocity iv is directly proportional to vn, e.g. the 256th part of vn.

These evaluations take place in all six states of FIG. 5. In the idle state, vn remains at 0. If the amounts of the two auxiliary variables asn and vsn exceed a predetermined threshold in the idle state, then the offset of an (as is measured from vsn and the last sixteen acceleration values referred to aO) and an initial value for vn is estimated. The amplitude vsa of the target speed vs is a positive constant, which depends on the expected movement dynamics and the image size. With positive values of asn and vsn, the target speed vs is set to vsa, the column index ix is set to the first column of the image information and the state changes from the idle state to item 2. With negative values, this means that vs is set to -vsa and ix to the last column and changed to state Neg 2.

In state Pos1, as soon as the column index ix is outside the index range, the set speed is set to 0. Once this has been done and also has a local maximum, if the maximum reaches an adaptively set threshold, ix is set to an index just below the first index in the image area, vs is set back to vsa and the status changes to item 2. Otherwise the state changes back to the idle state. The state Neg 1 works analogously, as can be seen from FIG. 5, for negative values. The states Pos 2 and Neg 2 each have two functions: First, a minimal dead time between successive extreme detections is ensured in the states Pos 1 and Neg 1. Secondly, the display process is terminated after a predetermined time (eg 10 s) after activation of the display.

Since no valid measured values are available when the display is switched on, the evaluation and display must be suppressed for a fixed dead time. This start state is shown in the state diagram of FIG. 5 as initialization.

The person skilled in the art will be able without difficulty to find further applications and refinements of the invention claimed in the subsequent patent claims and to make the modifications which may be necessary for this.

Claims

claims

1. Display arrangement for displaying a text or image present as a grid of points by a number of controllable, essentially point-shaped display elements, characterized in that

The display elements of the display are arranged essentially one-dimensionally,

• a movement sensor is provided which determines the movement of the display compared to the idle state, and

• When moving the display approximately perpendicular to the extension of the display elements, an image and / or text is generated by coordinated, controlled switching of the display elements so that it is visible to the eye.

2. Display arrangement according to claim 1, further characterized in that the evaluation of the measured values of the motion sensor takes place bidirectionally, whereby a coordinated controlled image generation when moving the display enables in every direction of motion and a text and / or image is reproduced in both directions of motion ,

3. Display arrangement according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the display elements are arranged in a single row next to one another at least approximately transversely to the main direction of movement of the display.

4. Display arrangement according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the display elements are arranged in a relatively narrow matrix which extends at least approximately transversely to the main direction of movement of the display.

5. Display arrangement according to at least one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the display elements are designed as approximately punctiform light sources, preferably as light-emitting diodes.

6. Display arrangement according to one or more of the preceding claims, characterized in that the movement sensor is designed as an acceleration sensor, the output of which is connected to a control unit which, in particular, depends on the movement of the display elements controls the acceleration of the display.

7. Display arrangement according to one or more of the preceding claims, characterized in that the control unit starts the construction of image and / or text when a predeterminable minimum speed is reached, to the viewer's eye as the sequence of the controlled columns or lines to display a coherent image or text.

8. Portable time measuring device, in particular a wristwatch, characterized in that it has a display arrangement according to one or more of claims 1 to 7 as the sole or additional display.

9. Portable communication or storage device, in particular mobile phone or PDA, characterized in that it has a display arrangement according to one or more of claims 1 to 7 as the sole or additional display.

0. Device according to claim 8 or 9, further characterized in that it has an interface, preferably a wireless interface, via which texts and / or graphics can be stored in the device and retrieved later, in particular to an audience via the integrated display to transmit.