Home appliance and method for operating the same

A method for operating a home appliance, the method comprising:

• receiving a stop command during operation of the home appliance due to at least one of key input, power cut, power blackout, and forcible operation termination;
• storing information including at least one of temporary data, state information, an error code, option information, and power information as diagnostic data in response to the stop command;
• turning power off;
• and
• generating, when a command to perform fault diagnosis is input, product information for fault diagnosis using the diagnostic data and modulating the product information to output the product information as a sound signal.

A home appliance comprising:

• a selector for inputting a command to perform fault diagnosis;
• a memory for storing at least one diagnostic data included in product information of the home appliance for the fault diagnosis;
• a controller for storing data generated during operation of the home appliance as the diagnostic data in the memory, creating the product information using the diagnostic data when a command to perform fault diagnosis is input through the selector, and encoding the product information to generate a digital signal including a plurality of frames;
• a modulator for generating a frequency signal corresponding to the digital signal;
• and
• a sound output device driven by the modulator to output a sound signal corresponding to the frequency signal,
• wherein, when an error occurrence history is present, the controller temporarily stores the data generated during the operation and discards the temporarily stored data and maintains the stored diagnostic data when the operation is terminated normally, and stores the temporarily stored data as the diagnostic data when an error has occurred during the operation.