Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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SumTater

Potato detecting device and fashion accessory
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Essential multifunction device for the modern world with appealing design and simple interface. The SumTater is a cape for everyday wear that comes in a wide variety of styles and fabrics. What sets this cape apart from your common posterior facing garments is a digital counter embedded in the fabric.

In the most basic version of this product, the counter will display the total number of potatoes (taters) in a 2-foot radius of the attached sensor module hidden between the fabric of the cape and your back.

Some have asked how this was not created sooner with it’s great versatility and value to the common man (or woman, SumTater does not discriminate except between potatoes for the purpose of counting). Say, for example, you are at a party with a known number of guests where an unknown number of potatoes are served with the meal. With the SumTater and some simple division, the person behind you in line could determine if it would be inappropriate to take more than one potato on the first pass though the buffet.

A more practical use case could be in situations similar to the potato famine where slower moving individuals could take advantage of their faster walking neighbors to detects the number of potatoes in a given location.

There have been few credible studies on the incidence of cancer in potato farmers. If exposure to potatoes is found to increase cancer, then the SumTater would become as indispensable an instrument as the Geiger counter.

Admittedly, the SumTater, in its most basic version, would come short in defending against deadly potato cannon assaults. The two foot radius would only provide ample warning for the nimblest and most alert of individuals positioned behind the wearer. This is the reason the SumTater has several signal boosting enhancements available.

Each booster provides an exponential increase in detection radius, and the charge would be a moderate fee used to cover development and production costs without unseemly profiteering off of potential potato projectile victims. The SumTater is primarily a product for the public good after all. Ten boosters would provide a 1024’ visual alarm radius for people behind the wearer at all times.

It has not escaped the notice of the SumTater producers that many of the benefits of the device (aside from the excellent fashion statement) are not available to the wearer. For this reason the SumTater-Vision app will be available for common smartphone platforms. This will connect to a rear facing button camera pointed at a strategically placed mirror which will allow the wearer to get an HD stream of a mirror image to their phone of the SumTater counter at any time as long as they are connected to the internet. The video is sent directly to the SumTater data center (with the TeraTater program a terabyte of video is saved for your person historical potato tracking) to ensure the security of the data and quality of the image.

Many have asked about some of the most common challenges faced by the SumTater counter. How will it handle (insert food consisting of incomplete pieces of potato here (e.g. hash browns, French fries, potato chips, latkes, etc.))? The SumTater comes will a three position selector switch which allows the user to determine how these are interpreted. The default setting is of course to count the arpu (average russet potato unit) equivalent of the food. One arpu is defined as 5.3 oz of potato material. Another option available is to count the number of distinct pieces that exist. The final setting is to count the number of distinct potatoes that are present regardless of the percentage of the potato that was used (the detector will not register pieces smaller than 0.01% of a potato).

I know what you’re concerned about now. How can the SumTater limit itself to just counting potatoes when there are so many more foods that create other life threatening situations? Fear not. The SumTater proprietary TaterSense sensor is swappable for other SumTater made detectors. Currently available models are the SumMater, SumNuts, and SumTotal for tomatoes, nuts, and all three combined. How can the SumTater keep track of the total for all those things at once, you say? The 13 digit display can keep up to nearly 10 trillion items on the counter.

SumTater, saving the worlds population from uncertainty in regards to the number of potatoes within a given radius of the person immediately in front of you one cape at a time.

Caarnus, Feb 04 2018

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       How will it distinguish a potato from, say, an ordinary hand grenade crudely painted to resemble a potato?   

       Go on, tell us about the sensors.
pertinax, Feb 04 2018
  

       Oh, and welcome to the half-bakery.
pertinax, Feb 04 2018
  

       Welcome to the Halfbakery. Day patients to the left, long-stay patients to the right. You'll be wanting to head right.
MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 04 2018
  

       I'm from Idaho, too.   

       About 250 miles from it.
lurch, Feb 05 2018
  

       //tell us about the sensors//   

       A practical SumTater cape could be a conveyor belt sensor that is in the form of a cape. The sensors measure angle deformation and are sewn in a grid pattern (planar mesh) on the cape. As items push under the cape, computer processing can reconstruct shape, count and position of whats on the belt.
wjt, Feb 05 2018
  

       This is undoubtedly the best tuber enumeration idea we have seen today. [+]
8th of 7, Feb 05 2018
  

       The best part is that it comes with a cape. Enter SumTaterMan, legendary Irish superhero.
RayfordSteele, Feb 08 2018
  
      
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