GadgetHer

The 555 LED Kitchen Timer: Cool Cooking Timer

A square, brown circuit board sits on a grey kitchen table. Four stainless steel screws are attached to the four corners of the circuit board. The center of the board has 12 LED filaments, colored white, arranged in circular fashion. Within the circle made up of the LED filaments sits a red colored hourglass again made up of LED filaments and a square shaped digital display.

Next to the brown colored circuit board, on the stove, yellow strands of pasta boil in an open utensil. The circuit board is switched on and it begins to keep a track of the minutes. When the digital display shows five minutes, the gas is switched off and the pasta is ready to be seasoned.

The square, brown circuit board is a kitchen timer that allows the user to keep a track of the cooking time. Called the 555 Timer, the minimalistic timer provides an easy visual reference of the cooking time elapsed. It may very well be an important cooking-timer innovation for a whole new generation of budding chefs.

College students and people in their late 20s can be distracted a lot with the TV, internet, games, and their mobile phones. They may keep a particular item on the stove to cook or boil and forget about it completely. This could lead to fateful kitchen accidents.

The 555 Timer, though is bare essential in its framework, has a quirky visual interface that could keep iPod and iPhone generation rooted to the kitchen as their food cooks. When the timer is switched on, the 12 circular LEDs light up, two at a time in red, and count the seconds down. Each circular LED represents five seconds. As the seconds tick away the red hourglass, LED kicks into action, with lights going off in the top portion accompanied by lights turning on in the bottom portion, representing grains of sand falling down.

As the circular LEDs complete one cycle, the first circular LED turns green. When all the 12 LEDs are lit up in green, it represents one minute. The one minute is displayed on the square digital display.

The USP of the 555 is certainly its attention grabbing way of telling time. The user is bound to look as the Timer ticks away, counting the time. This is far cooler than the boring egg timers that are around.

You can check out the 555 LED Kitchen Timer in action on Youtube.com.

Looking for some more interesting timers to assist you in cooking? Take a look at DoneRight 1-in-5 Timer and Perfect Pasta Timer.