A cooktop appliance includes a top panel with a gas burner disposed on the top panel. The cooktop appliance also includes a grate with a plurality of fingers. The grate is removably positioned above the gas burner. The plurality of fingers includes a sensor finger. The cooktop appliance also includes a hermetically sealed temperature sensor mounted to the sensor finger of the plurality of fingers of the grate. The hermetically sealed temperature sensor includes a base, a sheath extending from the base to a rounded tip, and a contact pad in the base.

Food cooking unit composed of gas burners (1), regulation electrovalves (3) of the supplied gas; an infrared sensor (5) focused towards the cooking zone; a thermocouple (6) in thermal contact with the flames and in connection with a safety electrovalve (4) through a relay (10) and an electronic control device (7) connected to said infrared sensor (5), to said at least one regulating electrovalve (3) and the relay (10) and that stores different regulation programs and that regulates the regulating electrovalve (3) and/or interrupts the thermocouple connection with the safety electrovalve in response to the signals obtained from the infrared sensor (5) and/or the thermocouple (6), and issues warnings in response to signals from the thermocouple (6).

A method and apparatus for a cooking appliance having an alert for energization of one or more burners. The cooking appliance may include an ignition enable control. The cooking appliance may include a locked mode and an unlocked mode. The cooking appliance may include one or more alarms to alert the user.

Methods and apparatus to indicate presence of a flame are disclosed. An example gas grill includes a burner tube having apertures to emit a fuel for combustion, an ignition element to cause ignition of the fuel emitted from the apertures of the burner tube, a flame sensor to detect the presence of a flame associated with the combustion of the fuel emitted from the apertures of the burner tube, and flame sense circuitry including a flame signal accessor to access a flame sense signal from the flame sensor, and a terminal to output an indication of the presence of the flame, the indication of the presence of the flame output without respect to an open or closed state of a lid of the grill.

A knob assembly includes a front panel, a knob located at a front side of the front panel and configured to rotate based on operation by a user, a knob shaft that is coupled to the knob and that extends through the front panel, a supporting pipe that receives the knob shaft and that supports the knob shaft, the supporting pipe being configured to maintain a position relative to the front panel, a valve configured to control supply of gas to the appliance, a valve shaft connected to the valve and configured to control the valve to adjust a flow rate of gas based on rotation of the valve shaft, and a joint that couples the knob shaft to the valve shaft and that is configured to transfer at least one of a rotational motion or a linear motion of the knob shaft to the valve shaft.

A cooking appliance capable of preventing a user's unintended rotation of a knob assembly includes: a main body including a control panel; a valve positioned inside the main body, and including a valve shaft being pushable and rotatable; and a knob assembly including an inner knob coupled with the valve shaft, and an outer knob being movable with respect to the inner knob in a first direction in which the outer knob approaches the inner knob, wherein, when the outer knob moves by a first push distance in the first direction, the valve shaft and the inner knob are prevented from rotating.

A cooking appliance and method generate an audible and/or visual indication to a user while an igniter is activated during ignition of a gas burner to notify the user that the igniter is active.

A method of operating a cooktop appliance in a precision mode includes determining a starting temperature and a set of parameters of a closed-loop algorithm for operation of a heating element corresponding to the starting temperature. The method also includes inputting a user-determined set temperature and a current temperature measurement into the closed-loop control algorithm and determining an output of the closed-loop control algorithm using the set of parameters corresponding to the starting temperature. Operation of the heating element is adjusted according to the output of the closed-loop control algorithm.

Disclosed herein is a cooking appliance including a communicator configured to perform communication with a terminal, an input unit configured to receive information from a user, and a controller configured to, when information on time until which remote control using the terminal is available is received via at least one of the communicator and the input unit, control the communication with the terminal. According to the present disclosure, by allowing a user to set a time at which a remote control mode is automatically cancelled after cooking is finished, the remote control is available during a time set by the user even after cooking is finished, and thus the usability of the remote control mode can be improved. According to the present disclosure, by limiting performance time of the remote control mode to be within a preset amount of time and limiting an infinite input of a remote control command into a terminal while the remote control mode is activated, a network error can be prevented, and erroneous operation of a cooking appliance due to hacking can be prevented.

A control unit controls a gas-based cooking appliance having gas burners. The control unit is configured to determine user information regarding a user of the cooking appliance using an electronic user device of the user. Furthermore, the control unit is configured to control the cooking appliance in dependence of the user information.