Although toasters should be among the most boring appliances in a household – with perhaps just a focus on making their toasting more deterministic rather than somewhere between ‘still frozen’ and ‘charcoal’ – somehow companies keep churning out toasters that just add very confusing ‘smart’ features. Of course, if a toaster adds a big touch screen and significant processing power, you may as well run DOOM on it, as was [Aaron Christophel]’s reflexive response.
While unboxing the Aeco Toastlab Elite toaster, [Aaron] is positively dumbfounded that they didn’t also add WiFi to the thing. Although on the bright side, that should mean no firmware updates being pushed via the internet. During the disassembly it can be seen that there’s an unpopulated pad for a WiFi chip and an antenna connection, making it clear that the PCB is a general purpose PCB that will see use in other appliances.
The SoC is marked up as a K660L with an external flash chip. Dumping the firmware is very easy, with highly accessible UART that spits out a ‘Welcome to ArtInChip Luban-Lite’ message. After some reverse-engineering the SoC turned out to be a rebranded RISC-V-based ArtInChip D133CxS, with a very usable SDK by the manufacturer. From there it was easy enough to get DOOM to run, with the bonus feature of needing to complete a level before the toaster will give the slice back.
“ArtInChip D133CxS”. It’s nice to see that Risc-V is slowly becoming the standard even for household appliances, but it’s beyond me why anybody would buy a toaster with a touch screen.
Finally something to do while waiting for the bread to toast.
“needing to complete a level before the toaster will give the slice back”
Excellent!
This is the best invention since, I don’t know, the wheel or something?
Fancy toaster? Just hope it’s not Talkie…
Howdy doodly doo!
Best feature ever:
If you are a bad Doom player, your toast will be “toast”!
Es ist nicht schwer, konsistente Ergebnisse aus einem einfachen Toaster zu bekommen.
Die Ausgangsbedingungen, wenn einmal ermittelt, müssen eingehalten werden.
1. Feuchtigkeitsgehalt des Brots.
2. Temperatur/Dauer der Röstung.
Ganz einfach.
Dead simple.
Keep it simple, stupid.
Obligatory “Do you want any toast?” posts here…
Awesome!! Now I can finally play Doom in my bathtub!
Would be cool if it has a Flying Toasters screensaver!
Brings me back to the Nintoaster days!
“needing to complete a level before the toaster will give the slice back”
That’s the diet feature, right?
So how does one purchase just the display-controller unit? Could be a nice UI if the price is right.