>This is to limit the risk of running it empty, which can damage it. It's always struck me as odd that just about every microwave out there will put a couple o

>This is to limit the risk of running it empty, which can damage it. It's always struck me as odd that just about every microwave out there will put a couple of thermal cut offs in there but none of them have any kind of microwave intensity sensor to actually detect when the cavity is empty or presenting too low of a load. Even the naive approach of just adding a weak antenna and attenuating the crap out of it would seem to be cheap enough in added parts at least for "luxury" brands and it would not only protect the microwave from damage but also allow fine power level control based on actual intensity instead of just total load.