JPS633556A - Method for discriminating slave station having trouble with data transmission/reception function - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To specify a faulty slave station by a master station even if trouble occurs in the data transmission/ reception function of the slace station, by using a tone dial transmitter to transmit its peculiar number code to the master station from the slave station after dialing connection between the slave station and the master station. CONSTITUTION:When a line between a master station 7 and the slave station is connected, monitor data is sent from a control part 8 of the slave station to the master station 7 in accordance with prescribed procedures. If trouble occurs in the data transmission function of the control part 8, a switching circuit SW2 is switched to a broken-line side by a trouble discriminating function incorporated in the control part 8, and incorporated peculiar number data of the slave station itself is transmitted to the master station 7 through a tone dial transmitter 10 which normally functions. Consequently, the slave station where trouble occurs is specified in th master station 7.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] (Industrial Application Field) The present invention relates to a data communication system using subscriber telephone lines, in which a failure occurs in a master station when a failure occurs in the data transmission function of a slave station. This invention relates to a method for determining which slave stations have been used.

(Prior art) In a system that uses subscriber telephone lines to transmit data such as monitoring information to the master station from slave stations dedicated to automatic data transmission scattered throughout Hirocha, the dialing function is normal, but the data If a failure occurs in the transmission function, the line connection between the slave station and the master station is only established, so the master station may not be able to receive data, but neither slave station nor the slave station can receive data. It was not possible to immediately determine whether a failure occurred in the data transmission function.

In such cases, the conventional method has been to add a self-diagnosis function to the slave station and issue an alarm if a failure occurs in the data transmission function, but this is time-consuming and in any case the slave station is unattended. In this case, there was a problem in that it was virtually impossible for the master station to detect a failed slave station.

(Purpose of the Invention) The present invention was made to solve the problems of the conventional automatic data transmission system from a large number of slave stations as described above. The present invention aims to provide a method for determining a slave station whose data transmission function has failed.

(Summary of the Invention) In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the method according to the second invention adds a predetermined additional device to the slave station and follows the steps below.

In other words, focusing on the fact that the dialing function of the slave station is normal, if the slave station itself determines that it is unable to send data, the slave station can use the tone dial generator after dialing with the master station. After transmitting the unique number code to the master station, the line connection is disconnected.

- After the line connection is broken, the master station decodes the unique number code of the slave station to identify the slave station whose data transmission function has failed.

(Examples) The present invention will be described in detail below using nine examples shown in the drawings.

In order to facilitate understanding of the present invention, FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a typical configuration of a modem in the description of an embodiment, in which a large number of slave stations 1, 2, . ...,
n are the sensors Sl, 82. . . . Automatic data transmitting devices 41゜4□, . . . , 4o and telephones 5□, 5□, . . . which receive data from Sn and automatically transmit it via the subscriber telephone line 3. , 5n. The data transmitted from these automatic data transmitting devices 40, 4□, . . . , 4n is received by the master station 7 via a circuit network 6 including a telephone exchange.

Further, the automatic data transmitting device 4 conventionally has a modem 9. It is equipped with a tone dial or pulse dial generator 10 and a DC connection circuit 11, and can be switched to the telephone set 5 by a switching circuit SWt. This is done depending on the state of the DC closed circuit in 5.

The system as described above includes the sensor Sz, 82.

. . . When monitoring data is input from Sn, it is determined whether the DC connection circuit is deaf, that is, whether the telephone 5 is in use or not, and if it is in use, the monitoring data is stored in the memory of the control unit 8. After the use of the storage telephone 5 is completed, the telephone number of the master station stored in the control section 8 is dialed from the tone dial or pulse dial generator 10 and transmitted to the master station 7, thereby establishing a line connection with the master station. When the dial connection between the parent and child is completed, the parent station 7 sends out a carrier signal to start data transmission, so the modem 9 owned by the slave station receives this signal and then performs the necessary transmission procedure to transmit data unique to the slave station. The monitoring data is transmitted to the master station 7 together with the identification information.

Therefore, if the dialing function is normal at the slave station, but a problem occurs in the data transmission function.

As mentioned above, since the master station cannot receive the slave station identification code, it is impossible to identify the slave station where the failure has occurred.

In order to solve this problem, in the present invention, first, the automatic data transmitter 4 of the slave station is configured as shown in FIG.

That is, a switching circuit SW2 is inserted between the modem 9 and the DC connection circuit 11, and the circuit is connected to the control section 8-modem 9-DC connection circuit route or control section 8-tone or pulse dial oscillator 10. - A switching circuit SW3 is added to enable switching to any one of the routes of the DC connection circuit and to switch to any one of the switching circuits 11.

Similarly, the switching circuits SW2 and SW3 are switched by a predetermined signal from a control section 8, which will be described later.

The circuit used in the present invention constructed as described above operates as follows.

Now, monitoring data from the sensor S is input to the control unit 8,
If the telephone set 5 is not in use, the control unit 8 operates to cause the tone dial transmitter 10, for example, to transmit the T-talk number of the master station 7 stored therein. When the line is connected between the parent and slave stations, the parent station sends out a carrier signal to the slave station, but at this time the polarity of the current flowing through the line is reversed, so the switching circuit SW3 is switched to the dashed line side in the figure to assist this. Alternatively, after the transmission of the tone dial signal is completed, the line connection is switched by a command from the control unit 8 without checking the line connection.

By doing so, the carrier signal from the master station is inputted to the control unit 8 as a signal to prompt data transmission via the DC connection circuit 11, the switching circuit SW2, and the modem 9, so that if the entire system is normal, the carrier signal is input from the control unit 8 through the DC connection circuit 11, the switching circuit SW2, and the modem 9. The monitoring data is transmitted to the master station 7 according to a predetermined procedure.

- If there is a failure in the data transmission function in the modem 9 and the control unit 8 attached to it, even if the line between the parent and child stations is connected, the modem 9 based on the carrier signal from the parent station Since the data from the master station cannot be detected by the control unit 8, data transmission is abandoned, the line is opened, and after a predetermined period of time, a line connection with the master station is attempted again.

If data based on the carrier signal from the master station 7 cannot be received even after repeating the above-mentioned operation a predetermined number of times, the switching circuit SW2 is switched to the dotted line side by the fault determination function built in the control section 8. The control section 8 drives the normally functioning tone dial transmitter based on the slave station's own unique number data contained therein, and transmits its own unique number to the master station 7.

At this time, if necessary, it is also possible to transmit monitoring data using a tone signal according to a predetermined procedure.

By doing this, if there is a problem only in the data transmission function of slave stations 1 to n, the slave station will be able to transmit at least its unique number to the master station 7, and if this is decoded, the master station 7 will be able to It will be understood that it is possible to easily identify a slave station in which a failure has occurred.

For a slave station having the configuration and functions as described above, the master station 7 connects a modem 13 and a dial tone receiving circuit 14 to a network control unit 12 connected to a subscriber telephone line 3, as shown in FIG. It is only necessary to adopt a configuration in which each of them is connected to the received data processing device 15.

By doing this, if the entire system is functioning normally, the data from the slave station can be demodulated by the modem 13 and printed out by the data processing device 15, and there is no problem in the data transmission function of the slave station. If a fault has occurred, the dial tone receiving circuit 14 demodulates the monitoring data by modulating it with the unique number of the faulty slave station and, if necessary, a tone signal, and outputs it to the data processing device 15. This is how it was done.

Note that there is a possibility that a failure may occur in the data reception function of the master station, so it is not necessary to limit the number of dead master stations to one, and it is also effective to install a plurality of master stations.

In this case, when the slave station is unable to transmit data to the - master station, it may be possible to attempt data transmission to another master station. In addition, if data cannot be sent to any of the master stations, after connecting the line with one of the master stations, a tone dial signal is used to transmit the slave station's unique number and, if necessary, monitoring data. It does not require any special explanation that the system may be configured.

(Effects of the Invention) Since the present invention uses the method described above, it can be applied to a system that uses subscriber telephone lines to transmit monitoring data from slave stations installed at monitoring stations scattered over a wide area to a master station. If a failure occurs in the data transmission function of a slave station, it becomes possible to identify the slave station in question completely unattended, reducing the number of personnel required for maintenance, inspection, or repair of remote monitoring systems, etc. It is extremely effective in reducing system operating costs to the utmost.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 (al is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of a slave station for realizing the discrimination method according to the present invention. Figure 1 (bl is a block diagram showing the configuration of a master station),
t is a configuration diagram of a monitoring system to which the present invention is applied;
bl is a block diagram showing the configuration of a conventional data transmission device. 1.2. ..., n...-Slave station, 3.
・・・・・・・・・Subscriber telephone line, 7・・・・・・
···master station. 9 and 13...Modem, 10...
......Tone dial transmission circuit, 14.
・・・・・・Dial tone receiving circuit. Patent applicant: Toyo Tsushinki Co., Ltd. 1st

Claims (1)

[Claims] In a system in which monitoring data, etc. of the slave stations are transmitted from a large number of slave stations to the master station via a modem using subscriber telephone lines, the dialing function of the slave stations is normal, but the data transmission/reception function is When a failure occurs in the slave station, after establishing a line connection with the master station, the slave station drives a tone dial generator to transmit a signal containing at least the unique number of the slave station, and the master station transmits this signal. 1. A method for determining a slave station having a data transmission/reception function failure, characterized in that a slave station having a data transmission/reception function failure can be identified in a master station by decoding the data.