Patent Application
20230188883
The present disclosure relates to a charging box for earphones, and more particularly to a charging box for earphones, which can provide alerts to the user of the earphones. This disclosure also relates to a charging box kit including a charging box and earphones. This disclosure also relates to a method for notifying a user of earphones.
The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Currently, in-ear earphones and active noise cancellation (ANC) earphones are popular because they can reduce or shield most environment sounds from being heard so that the user of the earphones can enjoy music in a relatively noisy environment. However, such earphones may also shield some useful or important environment sounds that the user of the earphones should be aware of. For example, if the shielded sound is an alert sound or a bell ringing, the wearer of the earphones may be unaware of something happening nearby.
Furthermore, a charging box is employed for charging and holding wireless earphones while the earphones are not in use. However, most of the current charging boxes have the basic functions of charging and holding the wireless earphones.
These issues with wireless in-ear earphones and ANC earphones, among other issues, are addressed by the present disclosure.
This section provides a general summary of the disclosure and is not a comprehensive disclosure of its full scope or all of its features.
According to one aspect of the disclosure, a charging box for wireless earphones includes: a battery; a plurality of contacts configured to be in contact with the wireless earphones when the wireless earphones are provided in the charging box; a charging circuit configured to electrically couple the battery to the plurality of contacts for charging the wireless earphones; an audio sensor configured to sense environment sounds and provide signals representative of the environment sounds; a processor configured to receive and process the signals and send information to the wireless earphones when the processor determines that the environment sounds contains predefined sounds.
Optionally, the predefined sounds are selected from a group consisting of a car horn sound, a doorbell ringing sound, an alarm sound, and a beeping sound.
Optionally, the charging box further comprises a Bluetooth communication interface, and wherein the information is sent to the earphones via the Bluetooth communication interface.
Optionally, the processor is configured to perform a Natural Language Processing algorithm to determine whether the environment sound includes the one or more predefined sounds.
Optionally, the processor is a system on chip (SoC)-type processor including a Bluetooth low energy interface.
Optionally, the one or more predefined sounds are sound samples that are pre-stored in the charging box.
Optionally, the processor sends the information directly to the earphones.
Optionally, the processor sends the information to a mobile phone, and in response to receiving the information, the mobile phone sends the information to the earphone.
According to another aspect of the disclosure, a charging box kit includes a charging box and a pair of wireless earphones configured to be provided in the charging box.
Optionally, the pair of wireless earphones are in-ear earphones or automatic noise cancelling earphones.
Optionally, the wireless earphones are configured to generate an alert sound in response to receiving the information from the charging box.
Optionally, the earphones comprises: a second audio sensor configured to sense the environment sounds and provide second signals representative of the environment sounds; and a second processor configured to receive and process the second signals upon receipt of the information from the charging box, and the wireless earphones are configured to generate an alert sound when the second processor of the earphones determines that the environment sounds includes the predefined sounds.
According to another aspect of the disclosure, a method for notifying a wearer of earphones is includes: providing the charging box kit; receiving, using the audio sensor of the charging box, the environment sounds and generating the signals representative of the environment sounds; receiving and processing, using the processor of the charging box, the signals representative of the environment sounds; sending an information to the wireless earphones when the processor of the charging box determines that the environment sounds contains predefined sounds; and generating sound in the wireless earphones to notify the user of the earphones an existence of the predefined sound from among the environment sounds.
Optionally, the method further comprises the steps of: receiving the environment sounds and generating signals representative of the environment sounds by using a second audio sensor of the earphones after the receipt of the information from the charging box; and receiving and processing the signals representative of the environment sounds by using a second processor of the earphones.
Other systems, method, features and advantages of the disclosure will be, or will become, apparent to one with skill in the art upon examination of the following figures and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, features and advantages be included within this description, be within the scope of the disclosure, and be protected by the following claims.
Further areas of applicability will become apparent from the description provided herein. It should be understood that the description and specific examples are intended for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.
In order that the disclosure may be well understood, there will now be described various forms thereof, given by way of example, reference being made to the accompanying drawings, in which:
The drawings described herein are for illustration purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure in any way.
The following description is merely exemplary in nature and is not intended to limit the present disclosure, application, or uses. It should be understood that throughout the drawings, corresponding reference numerals indicate like or corresponding parts and features.
As used herein, the singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. The terms “comprises”, “comprising”, “includes”, and/or “including”, as used herein, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof. As used herein, the term “and/or” and the symbol “/” are meant to include any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items. Additionally, while the terms first, second, etc., may be used herein to describe various elements, components, steps or calculations, these elements, components, steps or calculations should not be limited by these terms, rather these terms are only used to distinguish one element, component, step or calculation from another. For example, a first component could be termed a second component, similarly a first calculation could be termed a second calculation; similarly a first step could be termed a second step; all without departing from the scope of this disclosure.
To clarify the use in the pending claims and to hereby provide notice to the public, the phrases “at least one of <A>, <B>, . . . and <N>” or “at least one of <A>, <B>, . . . <N>, or combinations thereof” are defined by the Applicant in the broadest sense, superseding any other implied definitions provided herein unless expressly asserted by the Applicant to the contrary, to mean one or more elements selected from the group comprising A, B, . . . and N, that is to say, any combination of one or more of the elements A, B, . . . or N including any one element alone or in combination with one or more of the other elements, which may also include, in combination, additional elements not listed.
The audio sensor 110 is configured to sense and receive environment sounds and generate signals representative of the environment sounds. The processor 102 is configured to receive the signals representative of the environment sound from the audio sensor 110, and the processor 102 is configured to process the received signals to determine whether the environment sounds comprise certain types of predefined sounds. The predefined sounds can be certain, useful, or other types of sounds that the wearer of the earphones should be aware of, such as the sound of a doorbell ringing, an alarm sound, a beep, a car horn, or other types of sounds.
The process then proceeds to initializing step S102, at which the processor 102 performs one or more initializing processes, such as setting up one or more predefined sounds for the process and a threshold for a matching degree. The predefined sounds can be set up by, for example, reading from a storage device that stores the predefined sounds.
The process then proceeds to step S103, at which the audio sensor 110 senses and receives the environment sounds and generates signals representative of the environment sounds. The processor 102 receives the signals representative of the environment sound from the audio sensor 110.
The process then proceeds to step S104, at which the processor 102 processes the signals representative of the environment sound by performing a natural language processing (NLP) routine, which generates a result indicating the matching degree of the environment sounds to the predefined sounds. The NLP routine is known by one of ordinary skill in the art, and the detailed description thereof is omitted for the sake of brevity.
The process then proceeds to step S105, at which the processor 102 determines whether or not the matching degree generated in S104 reaches or exceeds a predefined threshold. If the matching degree generated in S104 does not reach or exceed the predefined threshold, which means that the environment sounds do not include any sound that has enough similarity with respect to one or more of the predefined sounds, then the process will proceed to S103. If the matching degree generated in S104 does reach or exceed the predefined threshold, which means that the environment sounds do include at least one sound that has enough similarity with one of the predefined sounds, the process will go to step S106.
At S106, the processor 102 sends information to the earphones 210 or mobile phone 310 via the BLE communication link notifying the user that the environment sounds contains at least one of the predefined sounds. Then the process goes back to S103.
Referring to
As described above, the charging box 100 of the present disclosure includes an audio sensor 110, which can sense and receive the environment sound and generate signals representative of the environment sound. Furthermore, the charging box 100 includes the processor 102 that processes the signals and determines whether the environment sound includes any one of the predefined sounds. When the processor 102 determines that the environment sound includes one or more of the predefined sounds, the processor 102 will send information to the earphones 210, which in turn notifies the user of the earphones 210 the existence of the predefined sounds from among the environment sounds. The charging box 100 of the present disclosure may be employed with wireless in-ear earphones or ANC earphones. As such, the user of the earphones 210 can enjoy music in a relatively noisy environment since the in-ear earphones or ANC earphones can reduce or shield most environment sounds from being heard. Moreover, the user of the earphones 210 will be notified by the earphones 210 of the existence of the predefined sound from among the environmental sounds, such as alert sounds or bell rings, so that the user of the earphones 210 can be aware of specific types of sounds or events in the environment. In addition, since the audio sensor 110 and the process as shown in
In one embodiment, the predefined sounds include, but are not limited to, the sound of a car horn, the sound of a doorbell ringing, etc. For example, when a user walks in the street while wearing earphones 210, the user listens to music and will be notified whenever there is a sound of car horn nearby. For example, when a user is at home while wearing earphones, the user can listen to music and will not miss a doorbell ringing.
When a user wears the earphones, the charging box 100 may sometimes be placed in a bag or a pocket. Since the charging box 100 is in a bag or pocket, the environment sounds received by the audio sensor 110 of the charging box 100 may be unclear due to the bag or packet surrounding the charging box 100. Thus, the earphones 210 may perform a confirmation or double check process after the earphones 210 receives the information from the charging box 100 indicating that the environment sounds includes at least one of the predefined sounds. In addition, the earphones 210 may perform a confirmation or double check process to avoid generating and transmitting incorrect information from the charging box 100.
The process then proceeds to step S202, at which the audio sensor 216 of the earphones 210 senses and receives the environment sounds and generates signals representative of the environment sounds. The processor 212 of the earphones 210 receives the signals representative of the environment sound from the audio sensor 216. Alternatively or additionally, the audio sensor 216 of the earphones 210 may sense and receive the environment sound, generate signals representative of the environment sound, and store the latest signal in a buffer. In this embodiment, the processor 212 of the earphones 210 may read the latest signal from the buffer.
The process then proceeds to step S203, at which the processor 212 of the earphones 210 processes the signals representative of the environment sound by employing NLP algorithms, which generate a result indicating the matching degree of the environment sound to the predefined sounds. The NLP algorithm is known in the art, and the detailed description thereof is omitted for the sake of brevity.
The process then proceeds to step S204, at which the processor 202 of the earphones 210 determines whether the matching degree generated in S203 reaches or exceeds a predefined threshold. If the matching degree generated in S203 does not reach or exceed the predefined threshold, which means that the environment sounds do not includes any sound that has enough similarity with one or more of the predefined sounds, the process will proceed to S206, which is the end of the process. If the matching degree generated in S203 does reach or exceed the predefined threshold, which means that the environment sounds do include at least one sound that has enough similarity with one of the predefined sounds, the process proceeds to step S205.
At S205, the earphones 210 will generate an alert sound, such as a beeping sound notifying the user of the earphones that the environment sounds includes at least one of the predefined sounds. Then the process proceeds to S206, which is the end of the process.
In the embodiment shown in
By using the process as shown in
In some embodiments of the present disclosure, the predefined sounds may be sound samples that are pre-stored in a storage device of the earphones 210 by the manufacturer of the charging box 100. In some further embodiments of the present disclosure, the user of the earphones 210 and charging box 100 may select one or more of the pre-stored sounds as the predefined sounds via an application being executed by the mobile phone 310. In some further embodiments of the present disclosure, the user of the charging box 100 may customize the predefined sounds in the charging box 100via the application being executed by the mobile phone 310, such as downloading sound samples from the internet and transmitting the downloaded sound samples to the charging box 100 as customized predefined sounds.
In the embodiments shown in
In the embodiments shown in
In one embodiment, the processor of the present disclosure is a system on chip (SoC) that employs BLE communication. However, the present disclosure is not limited thereto, and the processor can be provided by other types of processors, such as an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a digital signal processor (DSP), a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), or a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). As shown, the charging box 100 according to some embodiments of the present disclosure includes an audio sensor, however, the present disclosure is not limited thereto and can include any appropriate audio sensor, such as a microphone or other types of sensors that sense the environment sounds and provide signals representative of the environment sounds.
Systems and methods have been described in general terms as an aid to understanding details of the disclosure. In some instances, well-known structures, materials, and/or operations have not been specifically shown or described in detail to avoid obscuring aspects of the disclosure. In other instances, specific details have been given to provide a thorough understanding of the disclosure. One skilled in the relevant art will recognize that the disclosure may be embodied in other specific forms, for example, to adapt to a particular system or apparatus or situation or material or component, without departing from the spirit or characteristics thereof. Therefore, the disclosures and descriptions herein are intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of the scope of the disclosure. Accordingly, the disclosure is not to be restricted except in light of the attached claims and their equivalents.
Unless otherwise expressly indicated herein, all numerical values indicating mechanical/thermal properties, compositional percentages, dimensions and/or tolerances, or other characteristics are to be understood as modified by the word “about” or “approximately” in describing the scope of the present disclosure. This modification is desired for various reasons including industrial practice, material, manufacturing, and assembly tolerances, and testing capability.
In this application, the term “controller” and/or “module” may refer to, be part of, or include: an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC); a digital, analog, or mixed analog/digital discrete circuit; a digital, analog, or mixed analog/digital integrated circuit; a combinational logic circuit; a field programmable gate array (FPGA); a processor circuit (shared, dedicated, or group) that executes code; a memory circuit (shared, dedicated, or group) that stores code executed by the processor circuit; other suitable hardware components that provide the described functionality; or a combination of some or all of the above, such as in a system-on-chip.
The term memory is a subset of the term computer-readable medium. The term computer-readable medium, as used herein, does not encompass transitory electrical or electromagnetic signals propagating through a medium (such as on a carrier wave); the term computer-readable medium may therefore be considered tangible and non-transitory. Non-limiting examples of a non-transitory, tangible computer-readable medium are nonvolatile memory circuits (such as a flash memory circuit, an erasable programmable read-only memory circuit, or a mask read-only circuit), volatile memory circuits (such as a static random access memory circuit or a dynamic random access memory circuit), magnetic storage media (such as an analog or digital magnetic tape or a hard disk drive), and optical storage media (such as a CD, a DVD, or a Blu-ray Disc).
The apparatuses and methods described in this application may be partially or fully implemented by a special purpose computer created by configuring a general-purpose computer to execute one or more particular functions embodied in computer programs. The functional blocks, flowchart components, and other elements described above serve as software specifications, which can be translated into the computer programs by the routine work of a skilled technician or programmer.
The description of the disclosure is merely exemplary in nature and, thus, variations that do not depart from the substance of the disclosure are intended to be within the scope of the disclosure. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the spirit and scope of the disclosure.
This application is a continuation of International Application No. PCT/CN2020/109186, filed on Aug. 14, 2020. The disclosure of the above application is incorporated herein by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | PCT/CN2020/109186 | Aug 2020 | US |
| Child | 18105022 | US |
