The washing machine – sometimes combined with dryer - is the home appliance with perhaps the longest development history, with commercial models introduced as far back as the mid 1850’s! Today they are required to clean more effectively while consuming less energy, water and detergent, and operate at the lowest possible noise levels while ensuring greater safety. They are also increasingly required to provide connectivity to enable home automation and control through the cloud and mobile apps, and to make complex functionality easy to use via a user-friendly interface.
ST offers a wide selection of devices to design efficient motor control solutions for the various types of motors found in today’s washing machines – from 3-phase brushless to universal motors – including a full range of STM32 microcontrollers, power MOSFET, IGBTs and intelligent power modules (IPMs) and triacs, diodes together with high-voltage gate drivers, and eases design with a complete suite of hardware and software evaluation and development tools.
In addition, ST has a broad range of advanced MEMS motion and environmental sensors, as well as wired and wireless connectivity solutions, to help in the design of connected, efficient and user-friendly washing machines.
Washing machine block diagram
