JPH11355759A - Remote monitoring system - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Problem] In a conventional remote monitoring system, since a monitoring station provided at a remote place has a function of a WWW server, the software of the monitoring station becomes large-scale, and the system construction is difficult. There is a problem that the cost is high and the maintenance management is difficult. A remote monitoring system that can be constructed at a low cost and that can easily perform the maintenance management is provided. SOLUTION: Image data transmitted from a plurality of monitoring stations 1 is received by a receiving WWW client 31 in a master station 3 and stored in an image database in a WWW server disk 33, and a WWW server 32 is connected via an intranet. This is a remote monitoring system that searches and outputs an image database of a WWW server disk 33 based on requests from a plurality of connected WWW clients 34.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a remote monitoring system for performing remote monitoring using an intranet, and more particularly to a remote monitoring system that can be constructed at low cost and can easily perform maintenance.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art With the spread of the Internet in recent years,
Intranets have attracted attention as means for easily and inexpensively implementing an in-house information system. In the recent intranet technology, a remote monitoring system for realizing remote image monitoring on an intranet is being put into practical use.

The above-mentioned conventional remote monitoring system comprises a plurality of monitoring stations provided with an image input device for acquiring an image to be monitored, and a master station receiving images from each monitoring station via a transmission line. In the master station, a plurality of clients connected via an intranet are provided. Then, the client can monitor the remote place in the master station by receiving and displaying the image information from each monitoring station via the intranet and the transmission path.

[0004] A plurality of monitoring stations are provided by WWW (World
It has a function as a Wide Web server and transmits image information in response to a request from a client.

[0005]

However, in the above-mentioned conventional remote monitoring system, since the monitoring station provided at a remote location has the function of a WWW server, the software of the monitoring station becomes large-scale. There has been a problem that the cost of system construction is high, and maintenance and management of the monitoring station requires network expertise, so that maintenance and management are difficult.

[0006] The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to provide a remote monitoring system capable of constructing a system at low cost and performing maintenance management easily.

[0007]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a monitoring system comprising: a plurality of monitoring stations for capturing an image and transmitting the encoded image data via a transmission line; A remote monitoring system comprising a master station for receiving, storing, and displaying image data transmitted from the monitoring station via the transmission path, wherein the master station has an image database storing the image data; A server having search means for searching and outputting the image database based on a request from a client connected to an intranet, and receiving image data transmitted from the monitoring station connected to the server and the intranet. A receiving client for storing the received image data in the image database, and a server connected to the server via an intranet; Operating the search means, characterized in that it is a master station having a plurality of clients to read and display the image data stored in the image database, compared to having a server function in the monitoring station The structure of the monitoring station can be greatly reduced, the cost of system construction can be reduced, the maintenance and management of the system can be facilitated, and the processing of receiving image data and storing it in the image database can be made independent of the server. By causing the receiving client to perform the processing, the load on the server can be reduced.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a remote monitoring system according to the first aspect, wherein the monitoring station transmits the image data by adding its own identification number to the image data. Station, the receiving client is a receiving client that stores the image data in the image database of the server in the order of image acquisition in the monitoring station for each identification number added to the received image data, When the server receives a request to switch the displayed image data of the monitoring station to image data of another monitoring station from a client, the server outputs the latest image data of the other monitoring station from the database. The feature is that the client can easily switch and display the images of multiple monitoring stations, and at the time of switching, It can be viewed from the image, thereby improving the convenience.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. In the remote monitoring system according to the embodiment of the present invention, one WWW server for collectively managing images from a plurality of monitoring stations is provided in a master station, and information is transmitted from the WWW server to an intranet in the master station. Thus, the configuration of the monitoring station and the system configuration can be simplified to reduce the system construction cost, and also facilitate the maintenance and management of the system.

First, the configuration of a remote monitoring system (this system) according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 1 is a system configuration block diagram of a remote monitoring system (this system) according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, the present system collectively manages a plurality of monitoring stations 1-1 to 1-n for inputting images to be monitored at remote locations and image data from the monitoring stations 1, and browses and displays the data at any time. It comprises a master station 3 and a transmission line 2 connecting the monitoring station 1 and the master station 3.

Each component will be specifically described. First, the monitoring station 1 includes an image input device 11 including a video camera or the like that captures an image, an image transmission device 12 that encodes an input image as an information source and transmits image data, and a modem 13 that modulates the transmission line 2. And captures an image to be monitored and transmits it to the master station 3.

As described above, in the present system, since the monitoring station 1 has only the functions of acquiring and transmitting images and does not have the function as a WWW server, the software can be greatly simplified, and the cost of system construction can be greatly reduced. Can be reduced.

The master station 3 includes a WWW server 32 for collectively managing the image information transmitted from the monitoring station 1 and transmitting the image information via an intranet, an image database for hierarchically storing image data, and an image database. A WWW server disk 33 having an image search page as a homepage of the Internet, a modem 30 for receiving and demodulating image data from the transmission line 2, and receiving image data input from the modem 30, and via the intranet to the WWW Reception WWW client 31 stored in server disk 33
And a plurality of WWW clients 34-1 to 34-m for retrieving and displaying images in the WWW server disk 33. The WWW client 34 further includes a Web browser 35 for browsing image data on the WWW server disk 33. It has.

Although not shown here, the WWW server 32 may be connected to the Internet via a modem. In this case, not only the WWW client 34 in the master station 3 but also the Internet The user can also browse the image information in the WWW server disk 33 at any time.

Further, as a feature of the present system, uploading from the client to the image database of the WWW server disk 33 is permitted only to the receiving WWW client 31. That is, the receiving WWW client 31 separates and manages the reception and management of image data from the monitoring station 1 separately from the WWW server 32. The provision of the receiving WWW client 31 reduces the load on the server. Is what you can do.

Further, the receiving WWW client 31
The ID of the monitoring station recognized by this system is stored in advance,
When data is received from the transmission path 2, it is checked whether or not the ID in the received data matches the registered ID, and only the image data from the source having the registered ID is transferred to the WWW server disk 33. Is to be remembered. The registration ID can be rewritten at any time from the receiving WWW client 31.

Next, the configuration of the image database in the WWW server disk 33 will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 2 is a conceptual explanatory diagram showing the configuration of the image database in the WWW server disk 33. As shown in FIG. 2, each monitoring station 1 is stored under the image directory in the image database.
A directory is provided for each of the monitoring stations 1 under the directory.
Has a hierarchical structure in which the image data transmitted from is stored as a file for each image acquisition date and time.

As described above, in the present system, since only the receiving WWW client 31 has access right on the intranet after the image directory, the data is stored in the image database from the receiving WWW client 31. The processing can be simplified.

The image search page stored in the WWW server disk 33 is transmitted from the WWW client 34 in the master station 3 connected to the intranet to the WWW client.
HT for browsing image information in server disk 33
It is an ML document (homepage), and a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is stored in the WWW server disk 33.
With

When the WWW client 34 on the intranet accesses the URL of the image search page, the image search means of the WWW server 32 starts the search processing.

Next, the operation of the present system will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 3 is an operation block diagram of the present system. As shown in FIG. 3, in the present system, first, the image input means 1a of the monitoring station 1 acquires an image to be monitored, the information source coding means 1b digitizes the input image, and the monitoring station ID adding means 1c The own station ID is added to the coded image data, and the image acquisition time adding means 1d is added.
Reads the time from the internal clock and adds the image acquisition time, and the data modulation / demodulation means 1 e modulates a series of data and sends it out to the transmission line 2.

Here, the image input means 1a of FIG.
The information source encoding means 1b, the monitoring station ID adding means 1c, and the image acquisition time adding means 1d are provided in the image transmitting apparatus 12 of FIG. 1, and the data modulation / demodulation means 1e is equivalent to the image input apparatus 11 shown in FIG. It corresponds to the modem 13 in FIG.

In the master station 3 on the receiving side, the data modulation / demodulation means 3a demodulates the data received from the transmission line 2, and the monitoring station ID checking means 3b reads the ID in the received data and is registered in advance. It is checked whether the IDs match the IDs of the plurality of monitoring stations 1.
The received data is hierarchically stored in the WW server disk 33. If the ID in the received data is not the registered ID in the monitoring station ID inspection means 3b, the received data is sent to the ID error processing means 3c, the received data is discarded, and the WWW server disk 33 Store the error log.

The data modulation / demodulation means 3a shown in FIG. 3 is the modem 30 shown in FIG.
The error processing unit 3c and a part of the data storage unit 3d correspond to the image receiving / receiving unit in the receiving WWW client 31 of FIG.
A part of the data storage means 3d is a WWW
This is provided in the server 32.

Here, the data format of the data transmitted from the monitoring station 1 will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 4 is a schematic explanatory view showing a format of an image packet transmitted from the monitoring station 1. As shown in FIG. 4, the image packet transmitted from the monitoring station 1 includes a monitoring station ID field, an image acquisition time field, and a data field, and the monitoring station ID and the image acquisition time have a fixed length. , The data field is of variable length. The encoded image data is stored in the data field.

Then, the information source encoding means 1 shown in FIG.
b, monitoring station ID adding means 1c, image acquisition time adding means 1
4, the data is assembled into the format shown in FIG. 4, modulated by the data modulation / demodulation means 1e, and transmitted to the transmission line 2.

In the master station 3 on the receiving side, the receiving WWW client 31 stores the image data in the image database of the WWW server disk 33 based on the monitoring station ID and the image acquisition time in the received image packet. Is what you do.

Next, the operation when browsing the image information in the WWW server disk 33 from the Web browser 35 of the WWW client 34 will be described. When browsing the image data in the WWW server disk 33 from the Web browser 35 of the WWW client 34, the user accesses the image search page of the WWW server 32 from the Web browser 35 via the intranet and inputs the ID of the desired monitoring station 1. .

In the WWW server 32, upon receiving an image search request, the image search means operates the WWW server disk 33.
The directory of the monitoring station ID input from the WWW client 34 is searched from the image database of the above, and a file list of the image data of the monitoring station 1 is created.

Then, in the WWW client 34, W
The image search page is displayed on its own display unit based on the file list created by the WW server 32. At this time, the latest image of the monitoring station 1 corresponding to the input monitoring station ID is displayed as an initial screen.

As described above, in the present system, the function of distributing image data to 34 on the intranet is performed by each monitoring station 1.
However, since the information is centralized in the WWW server 32 in the master station 3, the communication cost can be greatly reduced as compared with the method of transmitting the data to the WWW client 34 for each monitoring station 1.

Here, the processing in the image search means of the WWW server 32 will be described with reference to FIG. FIG.
FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating a process in an image search unit of the WWW server 32. As shown in FIG. 5, the image search means of the WWW server 32 starts a search process when an image search page is accessed from the WWW client 34, and first searches a directory of the monitoring station ID from the image database (100). ), List the monitoring stations 1 currently operating. Thus, even if the monitoring station 1 is added or abolished, it can be used as it is without changing the image search page.

Then, the image search means of the WWW server 32 creates an image file list for each monitoring station ID (1).
02). This process is performed for all directories (monitoring station IDs).
When the image file list is created for the final directory (104), the search process is terminated. The WWW client 34 displays an image search page based on the file list created in this manner.

Next, a display screen on the WWW client 34 side will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 6 shows the WW
FIG. 9 is a schematic explanatory view showing an example of a display screen at the time of a search in a W client 34. When the user accesses the image search page from the WWW client 34 and inputs a specific monitoring station ID, an initial screen as shown in FIG. 6 is displayed.

The area 41 in FIG. 6 is an area for displaying the latest image acquired by the designated monitoring station 1, and the area 42 is for displaying a list of monitoring station IDs. The area 43 displays a list of image files stored in the directory of the monitoring station ID selected by the area 42, and is a command button for switching a monitoring station ID or a file to be displayed. The area 44 displays the monitoring station ID and the image acquisition date and time of the image data displayed in the area 41.

Here, the monitoring station ID and the list of image files are stored in the WWW server 3 by the search processing shown in FIG.
2 is displayed based on the file list created by the image search means.

Then, from the file list, the image of the file specified in the area 42 and the area 43 is taken into the area 41 of the image search page and displayed on one screen. In this system, when the monitoring station ID is switched by the area 42, the latest image file among the image files stored under the monitoring station ID is output.

According to the remote monitoring system (this system) according to the embodiment of the present invention, image data transmitted from a plurality of monitoring stations 1 is collectively received by the receiving WWW client 31 in the master station 3. WWW server disk 33
Stored in the image database in the WWW server 32,
Since the image database of the WWW server disk 33 is searched and output based on requests from the plurality of WWW clients 34 connected via the intranet, the monitoring station 1 is compared with the monitoring station 1 having a server function. The configuration of the station 1 can be greatly simplified, and the cost of system construction can be reduced, and the processing of the WWW server 32 can be reduced by providing the receiving and storing processing of image data in the receiving WWW client 31. There is an effect that can be.

Further, according to the present system, the image data is stored in the image database for each monitoring station ID for each image acquisition time, and the WWW server 32 receives a request for switching the monitoring station ID to be browsed from the WWW client 34. If there is, the latest image data stored under the newly designated monitoring station ID is output, so that the client can easily switch the monitoring station image and browse from the latest image. Therefore, there is an effect that convenience can be improved.

[0040]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, the image data transmitted from the monitoring station is received by the receiving client of the master station, stored in the image database via the intranet, and provided in the master station. The remote server is a remote monitoring system that searches the image database based on the request from the client and outputs the image data. Therefore, the configuration of the monitoring station is greatly reduced as compared to the case where the monitoring station has a server function. By reducing the cost of system construction and facilitating the maintenance and management of the system, further, by allowing the receiving client to perform processing of receiving image data and storing the image data in the image database independently of the server,
There is an effect that the load on the server can be reduced.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, the monitoring station transmits the image data with its own identification number added thereto, and the receiving client transmits the image data to the monitoring station for each identification number added to the received image data. The image data is stored in the image database in the order of image acquisition, and when the server receives a request from the client to switch the displayed image data of the monitoring station to the image data of another monitoring station, the server stores the image data in the other monitoring station from the database. Since the remote monitoring system outputs the latest image data, the client can easily switch and display the images of multiple monitoring stations, and at the time of switching, can browse the latest images to improve the convenience. There is an effect that can be done.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system configuration block diagram of a remote monitoring system (this system) according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a conceptual explanatory diagram showing a configuration of an image database in a WWW server disk 33.

FIG. 3 is an operation block diagram of the present system.

FIG. 4 is a schematic explanatory diagram showing a format of an image packet transmitted from the monitoring station 1.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a process in an image search unit of the WWW server 32.

FIG. 6 is a schematic explanatory view showing an example of a display screen at the time of a search in the WWW client 34.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Monitoring station, 2 ... Transmission line, 3 ... Master station, 11 ... Image input device, 12 ... Image transmission device, 13 ... Modem,
31 WWW client for reception 32 WWW server 33 WWW server disk 34 WWW client 35 Web browser

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A plurality of monitoring stations for transmitting, via a transmission path, image data obtained by capturing and encoding an image, and receiving, storing, and displaying image data transmitted from the monitoring station via the transmission path. A remote monitoring system comprising a master station, wherein the master station searches and outputs the image database storing the image data and the image database based on a request from a client connected to an intranet. Means, a client connected to the server via an intranet, receiving image data transmitted from the monitoring station, and storing the received image data in the image database; and Connected, operating the search means of the server, and retrieving the image data stored in the image database. Remote monitoring system, which is a master station having a plurality of clients to be displayed out look, a. 2. The monitoring station is a monitoring station for transmitting image data with its own identification number added thereto, and a receiving client transmits an image at the monitoring station for each identification number added to the received image data. A receiving client that stores the image data in an image database of a server in an acquisition order, wherein the server requests the client to switch the displayed image data of the monitoring station to image data of another monitoring station from the client. 2. The remote monitoring system according to claim 1, wherein the remote monitoring system is a server that outputs the latest image data in the another monitoring station from the database when receiving the information.