Gas cooking appliance with electromechanical valves and rotary burner controls

A cooking appliance, comprising:

• a gas burner;
• a rotary burner control, the rotary burner control including:
• a rotary control actuator;
• a position sensor configured to output a position signal in response to rotation of the rotatable knob;
• and
• an electronic burner control user interface positioned on or adjacent to the rotary control actuator and configured to display status information for the rotary burner control;
• an electromechanical valve unit configured to couple the gas burner to a gas supply and to regulate an output level of the gas burner;
• and
• a control circuit in communication with the rotary burner control and the electromechanical valve unit, the control circuit configured to control the output level of the gas burner by controlling the electromechanical valve unit responsive to the position signal output by the position sensor and to control the electronic burner control user interface to indicate the output level of the gas burner, wherein the control circuit comprises:
• a circuit board including a controller and disposed within the cooking appliance but remote from the rotary burner control;
• a serial interface electrically coupling the rotary burner control to the controller;
• and
• a serial input/output (IO) expander coupled to the serial interface and configured to convert between parallel data used by the rotary burner control and serial data communicated over the serial interface.

A cooking appliance, comprising:

• a gas burner;
• a rotary burner control, the rotary burner control including:
• a rotary control actuator;
• a position sensor configured to output a position signal in response to rotation of the rotatable knob;
• and
• an electronic burner control user interface positioned on or adjacent to the rotary control actuator and configured to display status information for the rotary burner control;
• an electromechanical valve unit configured to couple the gas burner to a gas supply and to regulate an output level of the gas burner;
• and
• a control circuit in communication with the rotary burner control and the electromechanical valve unit, the control circuit configured to control the output level of the gas burner by controlling the electromechanical valve unit responsive to the position signal output by the position sensor and to control the electronic burner control user interface to indicate the output level of the gas burner, wherein the control circuit further includes:
• a fail-safe drive circuit configured to supply a drive voltage to the electromechanical valve unit, the fail-safe drive circuit configured to disable the drive voltage to the electromechanical valve unit in response to an absence of a heartbeat signal received through a heartbeat input of the fail-safe drive circuit;
• and
• a controller configured to execute instructions to operate the electronic burner control user interface and the electromechanical valve unit, wherein the controller is further configured to generate the heartbeat signal such that a software failure in the controller that inhibits generation of the heartbeat signal causes the fail-safe drive circuit to disable the drive voltage to electromechanical valve unit and thereby deactivate the electromechanical valve unit.