Gordon Henderson wrote
Chris French wrote

I use various other toasters and they all annoy me in one way or another
and don't seem to add anything. If one was to actually take something
and to be able to toast it automatically to a given brownness then that
might be an improvement, but none has so far AFAICS

You know what....

We've been making toast for 100s of years, yet we've not
come up with a good reliable design that "just works".

We have actually, just not one that works well everywhere.

My dualit is almost there

Don’t agree with that in a number of areas, particularly
with having to remember what setting to use for the
variety of things you toast and at a sensible price.

In other words that design can't be mass produced in china.

- the one niggle I have is that the 2nd load
of bread through it toasts slightly quicker...

Yes, that is a major design deficiency.

Not that it would affect everyone, I almost never
do more than one batch of toast at a time.

But then I've seen the opposite in toasters that
have a bi-metal strip type of "ready" mechanism.

But you don’t get either variable effect
with well designed electronic toasters.

The most repeatable ones I've used have been the chain/belt type -
used in cafes, etc. but then they need a warm-up time and also need
the public to not fiddle with the speed control or be stupid and put
criossants through it (I've seen them on-fire )-:

Yes, those aren't suitable for domestic single slice toasters.

It seems simple enough

Its actually quite a bit harder to do than it looks.

- put bread next to something hot enough to heat the bread
and toast the surface - not too hot that you end up with toast
with a cold middle, nor too cool that it takes too long and the
inside ends up at furnace temperature.

The other problem is that with unsliced bread and asymmetric stuff
like crumpets, you need a different amount of heat on each side.

Can we throw technology at it?

Corse we can.

I'm not sure - there are colour sensors but
what happens when you put in brown bread?

It wouldn’t be hard to have the toaster decide
that its just been asked to toast brown bread
and do that differently to white bread.

But given that the internal temperature affects the toasting
time, can we use a combination of internal temperature and
time via either a mechanical device, or some electronics?

Obviously possible to measure the internal temp
before starting to toast the most recent slice(s)

And if-so, who wants to take up the challenge?

I have toyed with the idea of diying one but then
decided that it was a lot less work to just get $2
toasters at garage/yard sales, keep some on hand
for when they inevitably die and automate the beer
brewing and house alarm and control systems first.

Or maybe we just put up with what
we have and keep an eye on it.

That is basically what I am doing currently.

It's either that or this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec