Humidifiers are widely used in the household environment. As is known, a humidifier can be used to provide an appropriate humidity level, which may be necessary for some kinds of furniture and/or devices and which makes people feel comfortable.
Nevertheless, there is still something that could be improved. For instance, the water in the humidifier should be sufficient and above an appropriate level when the humidifier is in operation. If there is not enough water in the humidifier, the humidifying function will stop working, and the supply power is wasted. More disadvantageously, continuous heating when the humidifier is low on water will bring potential risk, like a fire hazard. To avoid this, a user has to observe the water level frequently. One solution is to store more water in the tank of the humidifier, but this causes the size of the humidifier and hence the manufacturing cost to be increased. Thus, there is a growing need for automatic monitoring of the water level of a humidifier.
In the prior art, there is known a humidifier in which a float in combination with a reed switch (magnet interaction) is used for detecting the low water condition thereof. A magnet is attached to the float at a predetermined level of the water stored in the water reservoir. When the water is below said predetermined level, the float and the associated magnet will also be lower than the predetermined level, and therefore trigger the reed switch. However, such a humidifier is difficult to clean, because the float and the switch must be arranged at the bottom of the reservoir and thus the user cannot clean the space underneath. Secondly, its accuracy is not very good. When the reed switch is out of range, there may still be a relatively high level of water left due to a stacked tolerance spectrum.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds