A smart toaster to give bread preferred shade

A US student has developed a new ‘smart’ toaster which can cook bread to a person’s exact preferred shade of brown without burning it.

The toaster ditches traditional time settings in favour of a state-of-the-art colour-sensing method to ensure the bread inside never burns.

The ‘Hue’ smart toaster has been designed by 21-year-old Basheer Tome from the Georgia Institute of Technology after he grew tired of having to hover over unreliable toasters only for his bread to emerge burnt.

When the bread is put into the new toaster, an electronic screen on the machine displays the colour of the slice as it is, the Daily Mail reported.

A circular touch-display screen gives the user the various shades of brown they can select for their toast and even shows them the colour it will be when cooked.

The toaster has an array of colour sensors inside that study both sides of the bread and the heating device will stay on until the toast reaches that exact colour.

Because some breads are darker than others the outer ring of lights helps to show how many minutes it will take.

Although the toaster is just a concept design at the moment, Basheer hopes manufacturers will soon be knocking on his door to discuss mass production of the toaster.

The final version is made of aluminium, steel and double-paned glass, the report said.
“The project started as a quest to make toasters easier to use. I found out that a transparent glass toaster was really a popular idea on the Internet but was never created due to a lot of practical issues,” Basheer said.

“It’s because people don’t trust their toaster and have no predictable way to communicate with it. The majority of toasters measure toast based on time yet with very little consistency between brands, models, and different toasters which makes it tricky,” he said.