Cooking appliance with unintentional control activation detection

A cooking appliance, comprising:

• a gas cooking element;
• an igniter disposed adjacent to the gas cooking element to ignite the gas cooking element;
• a gas valve configured to regulate gas flow to the gas cooking element;
• a burner control coupled to the gas valve to vary the gas flow to the gas cooking element;
• and
• a control circuit coupled to the burner control and configured to activate the igniter when the burner control is positioned within a predetermined range of positions, the control circuit further configured to detect a time the burner control is in the predetermined range of positions, and in response to determining that the time the burner control is in the predetermined range of positions meets an alert criterion, generate an alert to a user;
• wherein the control circuit is further configured to detect a direction of movement of the burner control and to generate the alert only when the direction of movement indicates that the burner control is being moved in a first direction.

A cooking appliance, comprising:

• a gas cooking element;
• an igniter disposed adjacent to the gas cooking element to ignite the gas cooking element;
• a gas valve configured to regulate gas flow to the gas cooking element;
• a burner control coupled to the gas valve to vary the gas flow to the gas cooking element;
• and
• a control circuit coupled to the burner control and configured to activate the igniter when the burner control is positioned within a predetermined range of positions, the control circuit further configured to detect a time the burner control is in the predetermined range of positions, and in response to determining that the time the burner control is in the predetermined range of positions meets an alert criterion, generate an alert to a user;
• wherein the control circuit includes a switch that switches between first and second states, the switch coupled to the burner control and configured to be in the first state when the burner control is in the predetermined range of positions and to be in the second state when the burner control is not in the predetermined range of positions, and wherein the control circuit is configured to detect the time the burner control is in the predetermined range of positions by determining a time that the switch is in the first state.