Toaster Troubles

[dan20n]

G'day

I have a story to tell that I hope intrigues you smart people into giving me some feedback

I've owned a Breville toaster (See: Breville 800 2-slice) for a few years now, its been to several locations around Sydney in rentals etc, lived a hard life and still pumps out toast. (Great you say...)

The toaster is meant to be a little clever by rising the toast slowly, preview function, LED bar graph etc...
Too smart for its own good.

Problems:
After leaving the device plugged in for hours/days/weeks and while still powered on at the wall, toaster would develop from time to time a high pitched whine. If it happened at all, the pitch varied between events, not always super high pitch. Unplug it and the whine would slowly fade into the background.

My first thoughts are to the transformer as I've heard similar sounds coming from them. I could be way off.

The more interesting part for me is THIS:

The toaster is connected to a two-port wall socket, one for the toaster, the other was being used by a laptop charger.
While the toaster was being used the speakers on the laptop started buzzing to the tune of the Toaster. It was amazing to me. As the toast slowly rise, and then the arms release their hold on the toast, the sound would change to the rhythm of the toaster. And then the buzzing basically stopped once the toaster had completed its release of said toast.

Now comes the stupid part, after knowing what occurred above, the same toaster/wall socked combo was used and this time it was a phone charger and not a laptop. Start cooking toast... next minute the little wall wart is singing like crazy. I immediately pull it from the wall, and it continued to sing for about 30seconds, very high pitch.

Anyone care to give their thoughts on what's happening to the toaster and how it affected the laptop?
I wonder how it can affect the second socket?
Are other sockets at risk?
Any thoughts on safety or ideas of eliminating the issue?

I appreciate any comments.
Cheers

[sleemanj]

Toaster likely contains a switch mode power supply to drive the smarts.

It's a very noisy one by the sounds of it, you might have a cooked capacitor, pop it open and have a look at all the caps for starters, anything that looks a bit funny (bulged top typically).

[dan20n]

Good idea on the cooked cap, I'm usually taking most things apart but I have not with this one. Too many crumbs to deal with. Ill check it when I get home

thanks.

[staxquad]

I appreciate any comments.

they should build in speakers and an amp and when the toast pops up slowly, your national anthem should play 

my toaster has a countdown timer that I appreciate 

dumb toasters are passé


other ideas for a smart toaster?

video camera and a monitor to view toasting progress

statistics:  % perfect toasts, % burnt toasts, % too light toasts, # toasts/day, #toasts/year, total watts used/day, total watts used/yr, etc

the throwaway $1000 toaster 

[SeanB]

I upgraded to an electronic one a few years ago that I fixed after the element broke in a spot. 555 timer as timing driving a small solenoid to hold the mechanism down. Common failures is the cheap plastic parts inside break and then you toss it. Makes no difference as to what is inside, most use the same inner latch style and they all fail. Fancy electronics and cheap crappy switches and the poorest mouldings with slap dash assembly. Add to that they all have security screws that you need to remove.

[Rick Law]

Actually, I don't mind a toaster that can measure the reflectivity of the toasting surface so the toaster has some feedback as to how toasted the slide of bread is.

Oh, a moving platform so the toasting is even.  I hate having the right side too carbonized and the left side white as bread still.

Damn, why am I all a sudden so hungry...

[MacAttak]

other ideas for a smart toaster?

It should tweet whenever it pops out a new slice of toast.

It should have proximity sensor and clock so that if it senses you moving near it in the morning it will anticipate your hunger and start warming up on its own.

Probably also needs a compass because everyone knows the south side of bread toasts faster than the north side.

[sleemanj]

http://youtu.be/LRq_SAuQDec

[simonmc]

http://youtu.be/LRq_SAuQDec

Red dwarf. Awesome.

 

[VK5RC]

A KISS toaster for me,  I have too many mcus in devices that don't need one. :-)