Display Pager With Supplemental Display Means

The present invention relates to a paging receiver and, more particularly, to a display pager having a supplemental display means.

A conventional display pager receives a message and displays it on a display thereof. The display can be mounted on any side of the pager housing if the size of displayed messages is not very large. However, if the displayed message is large in size, the size of the display must be big and thus the display can be mounted on only the front of the housing, for that side is of a size wide enough to accommodate a big display. If a pager with a front mounted display is attached to a user's belt by a clip on the back side of the pager housing, the user must detach the pager from his belt to view a displayed message and the pager to his belt. This procedure is cumbersome and may cause excessive wear of the belt clip.

An object of the present invention is to provide a display pager which eliminates the above-mentioned disadvantage.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a display pager having a supplemental display from which the user can see a message without detaching the pager from his belt.

Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a pager having a display which displays a received message in an inverted manner and a mirror, acting as a supplemental display, which reflects the inverted message to provide the user with a noninverted message display.

According to the present invention, there is provided a paging receiver comprising a display which displays a received message and inverts the message characters to be displayed in response to a switch signal. The paging receiver also comprises a mirror foldably attached thereto which reflects the inverted message to display a message with noninverted characters. The receiver further comprises a switch which is closed and opened in accordance with the movement of the mirror to produce the switch signal.

The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following description referring to the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 shows a perspective view of a conventional display pager;

FIG. 2 shows a perspective view of a display pager embodying the present invention;

FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of the display pager shown in FIG. 2;

FIGS. 4A and 4B show examples of messages displayed on a display of the FIG. 2 pager;

FIGS. 5A and 5B show front and side views, respectively, of the FIG. 2 pager whose foldable mirror is shown unfolded;

FIGS. 5C and 5D show front and side views, respectively, of the FIG. 2 pager whose foldable mirror is shown folded;

FIGS. 6A and 6B show sectional views of the FIG. 2 pager, taken along lines 6A--6A and 6B--6B of FIGS. 5A and 5C respectively;

FIG. 7 shows a perspective view of the foldable mirror; and

FIG. 8 shows a perspective view of the FIG. 2 pager with the foldable mirror removed.

To better understand the present invention, a prior art display pager will first be described. In FIG. 1, the pager includes a casing 1, a display 2 and a clip 3. The display 2 is attached to a front side 1b of the casing 1. The upper side 1a of the casing 1 is not wide enough to accommodate display 2. The pager may be worn on a user's waist belt using the clip 3. To see a message displayed on the display 2, the user removes the pager from his belt. After checking the message, the pager is returned to the belt. This is both cumbersome and may cause excessive wearing of the belt clip 3.

The pager of the invention will now be described with respect to FIG. 2. The pager of FIG. 2 includes a casing, or housing 10, which accommodates the pager electrodes. The pager also includes a display 11, a foldable or movable mirror 12, a clip 13 and a switch 14. The display 11, the mirror 12 and the switch 14 are mounted on the front side of casing 10, while the clip 13 is mounted on the back side thereof.

The foldable mirror 12 has two positions best seen in FIGS. 6A and 6B. The mirror position illustrated in FIG. 6B is termed herein the folded position, while the mirror position of FIG. 6A is termed the unfolded position. When the mirror is in the folded position, as shown in FIGS. 5C, 5D and 6B, the switch 14 is open and thus a message is displayed on the display 11 in the normal, noninverted manner. When the mirror 12 is unfolded as shown in FIGS. 2, 5A, 5B and 6A, the switch 14 is closed to cause the display 11 to display a message thereon in an inverted form. Thus, the user can see from the upper side of casing 10 the message reflected on the mirror 12 in normal, noninverted form, and thus the user need not detach the pager from his belt to view the displayed message.

Referring to FIG. 3, the pager includes a receiver section 16 which receives a paging signal through an antenna 15. The receiver section 16 demodulates the received paging signal to produce a demodulated paging number and message or messages which follow the paging number. A decoder 17 compares the demodulated paging number with a paging number which is assigned to the pager and stored in a read-only memory (ROM) 18. If the two paging numbers are identical to each other, the decoder 17 produces an alert signal and provides a control signal and demodulated messages to a central processing unit 21. Upon reception of the alert signal, a speaker driver 19 drives a speaker 20 to generate an alert sound.

Upon receiving the control signal, CPU 21 decodes the received messages and then stores the decoded messages in a random access memory (RAM) 22. CPU 21 causes a liquid crystal display (LCD) 11 to display the decoded message thereon. A switch 14 is connected to CPU 21 whose switching operation is controlled by movement of the foldable mirror 12 (see FIG. 2). If the mirror 12 is folded, the switch 14 is open and CPU 21 causes the display 11 to normally display a message, as shown in FIG. 4A. If the mirror 12 is unfolded, the switch 14 is closed to produce a switch signal. CPU 21 causes the display 11 to display an inverted message in response to the switch signal, as shown in FIG. 4B. The display inverting technique is well known in the art and therefore a description thereof will be omitted from this specification. Reference is made to Japanese Laid-open (Kokai) application Nos. 74765/81 and 286329/87 for a detailed description of a display inverting technique.

In FIGS. 5A and 5B, the foldable mirror 12 is shown unfolded. Thus, the switch 14 is closed so that a message is displayed on the display 11 in an inverted form. The displayed message is reflected by the mirror 12 as indicated by an arrow 101. The reflected message can be seen, as a normal, noninverted message, from the upper side of housing 10. Accordingly, the user need not remove the pager from his belt to view a displayed message.

In FIGS. 5C and 5D, the foldable mirror 12 is shown folded and thus the switch 14 is open so that a message is normally displayed, i.e., without inversion, on the display 11, which message can be seen from the front side of housing 10.

As shown in FIGS. 6A and 6B, the mirror 12 rotates about an axial hole 121b which is engaged with an axial projection 103b (see FIG. 8) provided on a wall of a recess 103. In FIG. 6A, the mirror 12 is unfolded and retained in that position by the engagement of a projection 122b with a hole 104b (FIG. 8). A plunger 141 of the switch 14 is not pressed in that position, so that the switch 14 is closed and thus the display 11 displays an inverted message. In FIG. 6B, the mirror 12 is shown folded and retained in that position by the engagement of a projection 122b with a hole 105b (FIG. 8) and by the engagement of a projection 123 with a recess 102. The plunger 141 is depressed, so that the switch 14 is open and thus the display 11 displays a noninverted message. A knob 124 is used for unfolding the mirror 12.

The mirror 12 may be coated with silver or aluminum to provide a mirror surface thereon. As shown in FIGS. 7 and 8, the mirror 12 has axial holes 121a and 121b for engaging axial projections 103a and 103b, respectively, so that the mirror 12 rotates about a rotating axis 200. The mirror 12 also has projections 122a and 122b for engaging either holes 104a and 104b, and 105a and 105b, respectively, to retain the mirror 12 in either the unfolded or folded positions. To help retain the mirror 12 in the folded position, the projection 123 engages the recess 102. The switch 14 having the plunger 141 is mounted in the recess 103 of housing 10.