Fan protection method and fan system

[0017]FIG. 1 illustrates a flow chart of a fan protection method in accordance with the present invention. The present invention uses a counter to determine whether or not the abnormal situation is eliminated.

[0018] First, the fan protection apparatus can force the fan to stop when the fan encounters an abnormal situation. For example, a foreign material locks the fan. At this time, the fan is in a stop state in step 101. The time of the fan to stay stopped can be set by the users. Next, in the step 102, a counter is used to count the number of times of the fan is stopped in accordance with the present invention. According to the present invention, the counting process can be finished by subtracting 1 from the set count in the counter. The set count that can be set by the users represents the acceptable number of fan resets. Step 103 determines whether or not the number of times of the fan has been stopped is equal to the number of times of the set count, that is, whether or not the co

[0030] In other words, the present invention can repeat the loop from steps 101 to 108 after the fan is restarted in step 105. If the loop repeat number reaches the set count in the first counter and the abnormal situation existing in the fan has not been eliminated, the first counted is reset again. Next, step 109 is performed to subtract 1 from the count in the second counter. Step 111 checks whether or not the count in the second counter has been subtracted to zero. If the count in the second counter is equal to zero, the protection apparatus cuts off power to the fan in step 113. Otherwise, steps 101 to 112 are performed again. Therefore, if the count in the first counter is 6, the restart time is 10 seconds, the count in the second counter is 10 and the restart time is 1 minute, the protection apparatus cuts off power to the fan if the abnormal situation existing in the fan cannot be eliminated after 20 minutes.

[0031] According to the above description, the present invention can p