It's possible to buy "digital toasters".
What this particular bit of marketing duckspeak means is that the toaster has a backlit LCD display which displays the so-called "browning level", a fairly meaningless guide to the integrated energy delivery.
This is all extremely unsatisfactory.
The proposal is for a toaster employing precision technology to deliver a really accurate programmable toaster.
The actual toasting mechanism would be fairly conventional, probably using ceramic elements in front of parabolic reflectors, designed to deliver even heating.
The control unit would be programmable in terms of heat-up, toast, and cool-down, analogous to the envelope shaper of a sound synthesiser, with times to 0.1 s accuracy or better. The temperature would be sensed by multiple thermocouples, linked to a PID controller for accurate heating.
The system would of course log all system parameters for post-mission analysis and subsequent tweaks to the toasting programme.
Operation is via the integral LCD touchscreen, 802.11g, or Gigabit ethernet.
Bread parameters in terms of type, thickness, age, dryness, mass and size can be input and automatically compared with an online database of bread types, including results from other toasters, to allow quick development of specific programmes for "new" bread that the toaster has not previously encountered.-- 8th of 7, Jun 17 2016 Your system's primitive predecessor... rare_20steak [normzone, Jun 18 2016] Toast Text Messaging Toast_20Text_20Messaging [hippo, Jun 20 2016] //The control unit would be programmable in terms of heat-up, toast, and cool-down, analogous to the envelope shaper of a sound synthesiser, with times to 0.1 s accuracy or better. The temperature would be sensed by multiple thermocouples, linked to a PID controller for accurate heating.//
No no no, [8th]. You've got it all wrong - horribly wrong. What is needed is a toast reflectometer and humidometer, to monitor the brownness and crispness of the toast. The term is "feedback". What you have created is a dead-reckoning system.
Your system (and I use that word quite laxly) relies on the user being able to correlate their bread type with your online database - something which they will only be able to do with a large margin of error. Acconsequently, the precision timer and temperature controller will be irrelevant.
What I want out of a toaster is bread with a certain degree of toastedness, not bread which has been toasted according to precisely controlled parameters.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 17 2016 Instructing the second assistant under-butler to horsewhip the offending toast-child if its product deviates from your standards of acceptability may be effective, but is somewhat low-tech.
Admittedly, the system works well, though.-- 8th of 7, Jun 17 2016 Genius. Add a post-op butterer mechanism with a tunable ejector that will deliver the finished product to a waiting plate and I'll send you a check. Or possibly a cheque.-- whatrock, Jun 17 2016 I've wanted this ever since my first slice of toast and I didn't know it until now. I curse you for tarnishing my soul with a desire for physical goods I shall never obtain! I curse you to the barren land of unbaked loaves, where all the ovens make are fishbones and oddly smelling socks!-- Voice, Jun 18 2016 // I curse you for tarnishing my soul with a desire for physical goods I shall never obtain! //
<ticks box, wanders off humming cheerfully>-- 8th of 7, Jun 18 2016 //even heating.// I would want a micro-array of heating elements or reflectors to adjust local parameters on the fly.-- pocmloc, Jun 19 2016 Just step this way ... now, here we have the ThermaToast XRi, with ceramic infrared array heating elements supporting resolutions of up to 1080i and a response time of 100ms. Of course, it's a little more expensive, but we have some attractive finance packages available....-- 8th of 7, Jun 19 2016 Another great idea. You're on the way to the Golden Mouse Trap!-- pashute, Jun 20 2016 How exactly - apart from colour - do golden mice differ from regular grey, brown or white mice ?-- 8th of 7, Jun 20 2016 random, halfbakery