Here’s a fun project. Over on their YouTube page [Urban Circles] introduces Project Scribe.
The idea behind this project is that you can print out little life “receipts”. Notes, jokes, thoughts, anecdotes, memories. These little paper mementos have a physical reality that goes beyond their informational content. You can cut them up, organize them, scribble on them, highlight them, stick them on the wall, or in a scrapbook. The whole idea of the project is to help you make easier and better decisions every day by nudging you in the direction of being more mindful of where you’ve been and where you’re going.
The project is well documented on its GitHub page. The heart of the project is a thermal printer. These are the things that print the receipts you get from the store. You may need to conduct some research to find the best thermal paper to use; there are some hints and tips on this topic in the documentation. In addition to the thermal printer is a pretty stand to hold it and an Arduino board to drive it. Firmware for the Arduino is provided which will serve a basic web interface via WiFi.
If you build one, we’d love to hear how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, you can always fall back to using the thermal printer to level up your Dungeons and Dragons game.
Thanks to [Brittany L] for writing in about this one.
My beef even with safe bisphenol free thermal paper is how short lived it is. I don’t have a single fax that is not faded to 20% readability. The project itself is amazing and not every not is meant to last forever. I just wish we could have invented something better by now than the perfection that we reached with dot datrix and ink that lasts decades.
A bit of targeted soft heat (hair dryer or, more fitting for HaD readership, hot air soldering iron) on the paper will give back readibility.
But your point is valid
and the nice thing is, they fade. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
In most cases, applying hot air (hair dryer, medium setting) from distance (> 10 inches) on the BACK of the paper is enough to restore the print, but as negative of the original.
Have you seen C beams glitter in the dark Roy?
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…
all printed on a toxic thermal paper 🤡
it´s not anymore the case at least where i live, but i would not be surprised if phtalate-loaded thermal paper is still in use in USA… That and chlorinated chicken…
Somewhat less bad than it used to be, especially if you deliberately choose to use phenol-free receipt paper.
For those who don’t know, the magic chemical that makes thermal paper work has historically been BPA or BPS. When the receipt is heated, the phenol donates protons to the thermal ink compound (typically a leuco dye) to produce the dark color. Since it’s just kinda there, it can be absorbed through the skin pretty easily.
Of course the phenol-free paper has to use something else as a developer, and although those developers are probably better than phenols, they’re also less well studied, so it’s hard to know for sure. There’s also a chance that the sensitizer and binder used are also still something nasty, though I think the binders are typically pretty benign like PVA.
is exposure to thermal paper bad for you? most likely, on some level. is it bad for the environment? undoubtedly. Is it worse than the many other things we’re constantly exposing ourselves to as humans in the modern environment? sadly, probably not.
here’s a list of phenol-free paper distributors:
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-thermal-paper
I think I read on Wikipedia they switched to BPB.
Makes me think this could be the start of a Black Mirror episode.
“The whole idea of the project is to help you make easier and better decisions every day by nudging you in the direction of being more mindful of where you’ve been and where you’re going.”
Oo, oh. Google Glass. Audience participation on those decisions.
What a great idea – if only there was a more portable method that was pen-based and used little squares of regular paper rather than a long strip of thermal. Maybe with a little low-key adhesive along one edge. It could even come in lots of colors and clever shapes. Maybe 3M would be interested. /s
Hilariously I looked up “non thermal receipt printer” and the “non-thermal” ones from the usual sources explicitly list themselves as being thermal printers in the specs (yet non-thermal).
But they do exist as plain-paper “Kitchen/bar/reciept printers” (eg. Epson TM-U220) which are a bit spendy (less so on Ebay) but well made since thermal will be useless in a hot, greasy kitchen and they absolutely have to work day in and day out.
Speaking as someone whose cloud of “little squares” and other attempts at efficiency offer little improvement, the real problem with this won’t be committing things to a strip/square/strip/sheet but pulling it all together into coherent motion later. There’s no simple app for that.
Look for dot matrix receipt printers if you don’t want thermal. They are noisy and the print quality is much lower, but the prints don’t fade as fast as thermal. There’s also no BPA or BPS in the paper.
If you are buying a used one, make sure the ink ribbons are still being made. They have a limited shelf life, so a new old stock ribbon will probably be dry.