Massive Etch A Sketch From TV Screen

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhu3zojL5Y4]

[Jeri] put together an absolutely massive Etch A Sketch for The FatMan and Circuit Girl show. She had removed the DLP chip from an HD rear projection TV and decided to repurpose the 52inch screen. The movement mechanism uses pulleys from screen doors with nylon lines. The two sets of lines are fed in a criss cross pattern so that the parallel lines move in the same direction. The lines move tent poles in the x and y which controls the movements of the golf tee stylus. It’s driven by two high torque motors from $9 Harbor Freight 18V drills. They tried several different powders, but ended up using aluminum powder from an original Etch A Sketch because it sticks to everything. It will eventually be hooked up for IRC bot control once they get a large enough h-bridge.

[via adafruit]

32 thoughts on “Massive Etch A Sketch From TV Screen

  1. I have no need for a far out XXXL etch-shetch,but this may have provide me a solution to a line rigging problem, that has been plaguing me for quite some time. I need to sit down and see if this could save me some extra winch cranking time over other solutions I come up with.

    Before going online with it they need to create a while to remotely erase the thing. That may require keeping the thing in a secure room so Kitty, Spot, or human rug rats aren’t maimed or killed by the process.

  2. A nice build, but this is complete shit. I would be more impressed if they had driven the actual TV electronics to do such a thing, but an etch a sketch of this size is cheaply built from B&Q parts. Waste of a TV set and entirely pointless. Plus Fatman doesn’t seem to know anything, just another glorified spokesman. Try some real hacks for a change, i mean the floppy audio was good why fuck it up

  3. Nice to know that hackaday will post crap like this, but they won’t post my oscilliscope built from a hi8 camera CRT hack. I mean Haack !t only have a few posts but at least they try. H.a.D has def been going downhill. RSS feed deleted.

  4. m4nt3,if they annoy you so much find something else to read .its been said on here many times before that this is a place to express all types of hacks good or bad if there is one that you dont like than instead of running your mouth and being discouraging just overlook it and only pay attention to what pertains to your and your liking.A hacks a hack no matter what you modify i dont care if you do something cool with a frickin broomstick its still a hack,so take the good and leave the bad and quit talking shit.

  5. i’d like to see these guys put more effort into video production. the split screen webcam thing is kind of painful to watch. but I think the show has a lot of potential.

  6. I’m enjoying the comments from the trolls who don’t know Jeri’s history, or her fantastic past accomplishments.

    Look her up, man. You idiots are lucky she’s sharing her knowledge…treat her like a lady.

  7. That giant EAS caused me to go through about ten minutes of childhood memory free-association- and I remembered why you should NEVER smash an Etch-A-Sketch in a fireplace with a fire going. Oh- just a little heads-up: Don’t start smurfing Etch-A-Sketches any time soon,unless you enjoy entertaining those nice kids from the Bureau of Homeland Security.I realize that all of that beautiful Al powder in those things is truly cost-prohibitive as far as it goes toward launching anything towards the moon,but those suits with NO sense of humor don’t. LOL!

  8. @kday
    You make a lengthy post criticising a random commenter saying someone should not criticise others.
    See any flaw in that? Any catch?

    @hunnter
    Who would mind an etch-a-sketch on these subjects? you probably won’t be able to make out what it is in the first place, but even if you could, it’s a silly blocky drawing, not even the FCC would mind if it were broadcast on TV I bet.

  9. @ wwhat
    I am an expert at Etch-a-sketch.

    lol but really, it wouldn’t be that hard to make nice smooth drawings, it just takes a lot of patience and time. (or a nicely designed script / sequence)

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