Improving Safety in Home Appliances

Home appliances like microwaves, washing machines, televisions and other equipment contain hundreds of complex electronic parts. Naturally, a layman may not be interested in the inner working of these equipment. So the weight of designing a safe equipment falls on the manufacturer. The increase in complexity and leisure has come at a price – higher safety issues. More than ever before, it has become critical to ensure the safe operation of these home appliances. Embedded development can provide some answers in this case.

There are already many safeguards to ensure that the electrical and electronic components embedded in home appliances confirm to the highest international standards of safety (at least in the US). The International Electrotechnical Commission has also played an important role in defining standards for electronic control units of home appliances (IEC/UL 60730). This standard looks into the electrical, electronic, mechanical, EMC, environmental endurance and other requirements for home appliances.

Most home appliances contain single chip microcontrollers with input/output peripherals and embedded memory. So embedded developers must take note of IEC standards when they are designing microcontrollers for home appliances. MCU vendors can also help with it. The qualification process takes several months. MCU vendors can facilitate real time embedded software and other APIs so that the process can be finished relatively quicker.