METHOD FOR DECIDING LOCATION OF DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method for deciding the location of equipment such as a printer or a copying machine that nay be moved from time to time. SOLUTION: The method of this invention includes a step of querying portable second devices such as PDAs and personal computers that may be found near equipment and have GPS capabilities for location data. The method preferably has a step (block 2) of detecting a trigger event such as a time-out (block 24) or an interrupt (block 22) causes the peripheral to either initiate (blocks 32 to 36) a search for a second device or to initiate (block 30) a location data query with second device already in communication with the peripheral. The location data obtained from the second device is preferably assigned a distance factor value corresponding to how close the second device is to the peripheral (blocks 50 to 70). The peripheral location data will regularly be updated (block 106) with more reliable location data as it is obtained.