I have the same fear as WLD...you've got this brown or black mass in your pan, what's it going to be like in the middle if you started with raw potatoes? Having no experience of this, some time hints or more accurate testing methods might be good.
This is all very thrilling, it's going to produce something a lot better than a bag of hash browns from Iceland, that's for sure(Iceland, by the way, is a frozen food shop chain in England, in this case, not a country with geysirs and stuff).