1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to illuminators, light fixtures and other decorating light devices including self assembling or do it yourself light decorations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Light decorating devices including candleholders such as used in dining rooms or restaurants are mounted on walls, placed on shelves and tables and are attached to electrical cords that are inconvenient and not fit for portable decorating purposes, particularly for decorating a dining table. Similar are candleholders used in dining rooms and restaurants, they are inconvenient, require daily cleaning and care while lighting and handling.
Other well known decorative illuminators using small light bulbs or LEDs for simulating candlelight and/or with different colors and tint use batteries or rechargeable batteries and are convenient to users, however, such decorating light are available in given designs and shapes and are not always available in a design or shape that matches the surround and the interiors and/or are not fit for use in a given environment.
Further, such decorative LED illuminators are operated via select keys or buttons that are embedded into or under the light fixtures, and to switch or change the light color or program, the user has to pickup the fixture and touch the operating buttons or keys, which is not user friendly action.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for self decorating and assembling light fixture covers and for switching the light on or off and/or changing the light color and/or for selecting light programs by rotating and/or twisting and/or otherwise touching the decorative light fixture cover.
The present invention is achieved by the use of an illuminator unit that incorporates batteries or rechargeable batteries, the light control circuit and the illuminating LEDs or light bulbs. The illuminator unit can be attached to variety of stands, wall mounts, ceiling mounts or other supports including pendant hang-on cords or decorative chains, and be covered by a pre punched or self cut cover pieces that are self decorated and assembled to form a light fixture cover, such as forming a self decorated polyhedron cover.
Another objects of the present invention is to provide the core unit with a remote control circuit such as IR or wireless control, which enables the remote switching or changing the light programs of one or a plurality of such light fixtures, in a given dining room, a restaurant or other establishment for changing the light programs or color that fit a given environment or for changing the environment at will.
The self designed and assembled polyhedron cover, such as icosahedron cover, can be an imprinted and pre-designed plastic sheet circles, pre-punched and/or perforated and processed onto printable size, such as a standard paper size selected from the well known ISO sizes A4, A3 or B4 or the US size 8.5×11 or any other standard sizes that can be fed to and printed by a printer, such as ink jet printer or laser printer, used with PCs. The PC can be installed with a custom program for enabling the printing of the pre punched and/or perforated plastic sheet with programmed designs or with self designed motives, logos and/or any other printed images or characters, including information such as menus and prices in restaurants, drinks in bars and/or commercials such as offers for services and etc, or directing visitors in establishment, such as galleries or museums. Similarly the self designed or pre-designed motifs can be printed in multi color using industrial printers, silk screen printers and other conventionally available printers and methods.
The self designed or prefabricated cover, assembled from a pre punched and/or precut, furrowed and/or perforated pieces, or by a self cut imprinted plastic or paper sheet, includes folded flaps that are inserted into notches or slots provided in the base of the illuminator unit, with the slots having sizes that fit the sizes of a precut flaps or portion of the circles or other shapes at the bottom of the assembled cover. The base of the illuminator uses locks to hold the cover tight to the base, wherein said locks can be tighten into place using fasteners such as screws or self locking hooks that tightly attach the cover to the illuminator's base. The tight mechanical attachment binding the cover to the base enables the engaging of the cover for operating the illuminator, such as switching the lights on and off and/or changing its illumination programs and/or the light color or tint at will.
The another object of this invention is therefore the controlling of the lighting by gently rotating, twisting, pushing or pulling the illuminator cover itself, and thereby activating or actuating the illumination control circuit. For this purpose the illuminator of this invention includes an actuator and a switch or other devices, such as photo switch with, optical interrupters or magnets with hall sensors mounted in the base and on the actuator, in and/or about a center portion of the base. The actuator is attached to a support or a stand, such as a tabletop stand, rotating around its center and/or is spring pushed into place, allowing the illuminator to be pushed side way and/or up or down, for activating or actuating a switch, tact switch and/or magnets and/or hall sensors and other devices that can be actuated by movement. Similar actuation is achieved by remote control signals, motion detector or sound.
The foregoing and other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of preferred embodiments of the invention with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
The icosahedron structure of the present invention is made complete by introducing a triangle base 18 at the bottom of the icosahedorn ball as shown in
Each of the three assembled circles A1˜5, B1˜5 and C1˜5 shown in
The folded flaps are bonded to each other using pre applied bond or by self applying bond onto one or both adjoining flaps that are bonded together, such as A2 and A3 shown in
The four remaining D, E, F and G triangles 34 are bonded as shown in
The icosahedron structure is the preferred structure of the embodiment of the present invention, however, other well known polyhedron structures can be used. The dodecahedron (12 pentagons) example shown in
The eleven out of the twelve pentagon shape sheets used for the incomplete dodecahedron of the sheet 36 are surrounded by flaps for bonding the pentagons together to assemble a dodecahedron ball, excluding the shaped and clipped flaps 37 for attaching the dodecahedron ball assembly to an illuminator unit (not shown).
The same applies to the eight triangles of the sheet 38 forming the octahedron dual pyramid structure, with the lower, reversed pyramid is truncated and clipped for providing the four flaps 39 to be used for attaching the octahedron assembly to a base of an illuminator having the four corresponding slots (not shown). Regardless, it becomes clear from the illustrations in
While the triangles of the octahedron and the pentagons of the dodecahedron of the examples can be logically aligned and imprinted in a straight lines, the same cannot be easily configured for the icosahedron circles of the sheet 30K shown in
The precut keyed flaps of the circles 31K, 32K, 33K and 34K include keys that are coded by the number and the sizes of cutouts 42 that match the number and sizes of a protruding half cut keys 44 shown in
Moreover the precut circles 31K˜34K and the indentation of the furrows 43 formed by sheeting cutters, shown also in
The exploded view of the illuminator unit 25 is shown in
As will be explained later the illuminator can be operated by remote control signals such as IR or RF and/or operated by motion detection and/or by a surrounds sound and the rotating actuator cams 16 or notches including the switches and/or the use of photo interruptors with photo switches or the magnets with hall sensor that are discussed later may not be needed and not used for the illuminator operation, thereby the rotation of the polyhedron cover will not be needed for operating or for controlling the illuminator.
Yet the different menus, services, offers and other information imprinted on the polyhedron cover clearly shows the advantage of rotating the cover in order to view the printed information around the polyhedron. By this the actuator of the preferred embodiment clearly demonstrate the multiple advantages of the rotating actuator variations, including this simple solution for rotating the illuminator polyhedron cover.
The rotating actuator 12 with its clicking mechanism comprising the springy arm guides 12A and the cutouts 11A of the round cavity 11 explained above offer a stop mechanism at each click, preventing free rotation without stop for the combined illuminator and its polyhedron cover. Further, with the cams 16 or the notches and the leaf switch 14 and the contact 14A are not used it is possible to use the rotating actuator for feeding power. This is achieved by the introduction of rotating contacts also known as slip rings, instead of the switch 14, the contact 14A and the cams 16, for connecting electric wire to feed power to the illuminator as shown in
Instead of the cable passing through the stand 20 an electromagnetic induction coil structure (not shown) can be installed attached under stand 20. It should be clear that different power feed can be configured and implemented via the slip ring of the rotation actuator 12P. The term actuator in the following description and claims is used also for the actuator 12P for simplifying the terminology, even though the actuator 12P shown serve only to rotate the decorative polyhedron cover attached to the illuminator body and does not actuate the illuminator.
The cable feed 20P through the stand 20 is an additional hole provided for the cable passage along with the shown four holes used for the screw 21 and the pins 12S shown in
The base 18 further provides a cavity 19A for housing the connector 19 that connects a battery charger to the rechargeable batteries 8A, 8B and 8C. The battery base 15 locks into position and retains the battery charger connector 19 and the actuator 12 in their respective cavities, 19A for the connector 19 and the round housing 11 for the actuator 12. The battery base is locked into its cavity 15C via three hooks 15A of the battery base 15 that slide into the three hook slots 15B (only one is shown in
The battery base supports the three batteries or rechargeable batteries 8A, 8B and 8C using a well known spring 5 and surface contacts 4 that are commonly used in battery holders and containers, with the opposite contact 4 and the springs 5 are mounted at the bottom side of the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) 6, shown in
The body 10 of the illuminator unit is structured to hold three standard AAA batteries but any number of batteries and their size, shape, capacity and type can be used instead. The batteries can be regular non-rechargeable batteries, or rechargeable batteries. Instead of the shown connector 19 for recharging rechargeable batteries, a winding of a coil around a magnetic core can be used to recharge the batteries by a well known electromagnetic induction. There are many well known options for battery charging and any of the well known charging method can be used. The charging via the connector 19 shown in
The PCB assembly 6 is mounted onto the top holder 22 that locks the PCB 6 and the top holder to the illuminator body 10 via the three hooks 23 into three hook receivers or cutouts 24, only one is shown in
The top cover 22 shown in
Wires (not shown) are used for connecting the leaf switch 14 circuit and the battery charger connector 19 between the battery holder 15 and the PCB assembly 6. The wires are passing through a passage in the body 10 of the illuminator unit 25 (not shown) and are attached by a mini connector to the PCB assembly 6. When the batteries are replaced the mini connector (not shown) can be disconnected or the entire top holder 22 including the PCB 6 can be flipped to the side of the body 10 retained by the connecting wires (not shown) to allow for unobstructed replacement of the batteries. After the batteries are inserted the top holder 22 can be set back into place and relocked by its three hooks 23.
By this it becomes clear that the entire illuminator unit 25 is rotatable around its rotating actuator 12 that is attached or installed to the stand 20 or other support and placed on a table or other flat surfaces. To ensure no mechanical looseness the battery base 15 is provided with precise ring 15R that pressures the rotating actuator 12 equally and keep it tight in place. When the illuminator unit body 10 or base 18 are rotated, the activators or the projected cams 16 or notches (not shown) on top of the rotating actuator 12 will engage and push upward the leaf switch 14 to shorten the leaf switch circuit via the contact 14A, or release the contact and open the switch circuit, thereby generating a given command to the central processing unit that is explained later, for switching the illuminator on or off, or changing the LEDs color, or changing the lighting program and/or selecting other programs for the lighting sequences, brightness, timing including variations and combinations thereof.
Though the preferred embodiment of the present invention uses a mechanical cam 16 or a notch to activate the leaf switch 14 for generating a pulse signal to switch the illuminator on or off and/or for activating the illumination programs, the present invention includes non mechanical cam or notch for such activation. The preferred embodiment can use a magnetic hall sensor and a photo switch for generating actuating pulses, activated by a magnet and photo interrupter respectively. The term switching device in the following descriptions and claims refers to a switch, a leaf switch, push switch, pull switch, tact switch, micro switch, photo switch, hall sensor and combinations thereof. The term activator in the following description and claims refers to the cam 16, a notch, a magnet 16M and a photo interrupter 16L.
It is similarly possible to add a spring to keep the battery base 15 pressed down at all time (not shown) and reverse the activator and the switching devices such that pulling up of the icosahedron cover 40 or the illuminator body 25, or pulling it down when the illuminator is mounted upside down as shown in
The preferred embodiment of the present invention uses a single leaf switch or other well known switch such as push switch, tact switch or micro switch, however plurality of switches 14, hall sensors 14H and photo switches 14L and combinations thereof can be used. As will be explained later, such plurality of triggering switches and devices along with pre programmed activators including the actuating cams 16 and/or notches, and/or light interrupters 16L and/or magnets 16M can provide multiple control feed to the CPU 84 shown in
Even though the locks 13 are shown in
The cut edges of the clipped flaps can be sufficiently bended to be inserted into the slots, even though the locks 13 cover the end portions of the three slots 17-1, 17-2 and 17-3. If the icosahedron material is thicker and difficult to bend the screws 13A that hold the locks 13 in place can be released for pushing upwards the locks for enabling easier bend and insert of the attachment flaps into their respective slot.
The locks 13 are shown as a solid triangle blocks, formed by plastic molding or metal die cast, however the three individual locks can be parts fabricated from a metal sheet, such as the three triangle corners of the lock 13E shown in
The programs for the illuminator can be a combination of programs, for example a program for increasing and decreasing in rotation the white illumination along with varying the orange colored lights to simulate candlelight. Other lighting programs such as a combination and variation in time duration, color variation, intensity variation, flashing programs, strobe programs, switching on and off time such as switching the illuminator in the evening and switching it off midnight.
The programs can be triggered and actuated serially by each pulse generated by the switch 14 connected to an input of the CPU 84 as explained above, or the programs can operate in automatic sequence mode and continuously. Similarly any other actuating device including the photo switches and/or the hall sensors explained above can be used. When plurality of switches and/or other actuating devices are used it is possible to select a given program on the basis of the rotating actuator 12 angle, whereby the angle of the rotated illuminator versus the rotating actuator position can be set to generate a selected command, such as a single control pulse from a given switching device, or plurality of control pulses simultaneously from a plurality of switching devices to several inputs of the CPU 84 (not shown), in accordance to a pre designed switching devices and activators layout.
Another shown command actuator is the IR receiver 89 for receiving remote control commands and for operating the illuminator and for actuating individually or serially or in parallel any of the above mentioned illumination programs. Instead of the IR receiver 89 shown, or in addition to the IR receiver shown, it is possible to include well known motion detector device (not shown) to operate the illuminator on the basis of for example, a motion evaluation programs. Further the shown IR receiver can be replaced by an RF receiver for receiving wireless remote control signals for activating the illuminator programs. Similarly a microphone can be included for activating the illumination programs based on the sound surrounding the illuminator and in accordance to a given sound programs, for example pink color in response to a woman voice and blue color in response to a male voice, on the basis of voice analysis.
The illumination, the remote control, the motion detection and the sound programs can be loaded to a CPU memory during the production or assembly of the circuit 100 but it can also be loaded and/or updated and/or modified and/or upgraded through the program input connector 90 at any given time. The battery charging connector 90 shown connected in parallel to the batteries 8A˜8C can include a current regulator in its charging line to provide for example fast or slow charging, however such current control circuit can be included in the charger itself (not shown).
Shown are only few examples of the unlimited variations possible, the wall holder 71 of
Same apply to the stand or a support 20 shown in
It will of course, be understood by those skilled in the art that the particular embodiment of the invention here presented is by way of illustration only, and is meant to be in no way restrictive, therefore, numerous changes and modifications may be made, and the full use of equivalents resorted to, without departing from the spirit or scope of the inventions as outlined in the appended claims.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
5921668 | Bayer | Jul 1999 | A |
7267463 | Bayer et al. | Sep 2007 | B2 |
7347594 | Bayer et al. | Mar 2008 | B2 |
20090147511 | Simon | Jun 2009 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20110080114 A1 | Apr 2011 | US |