The Etch-A-Sketch has been a popular toy for decades. It can be fun to draw on, but you have to get things right the first time, because there’s no undo button. [Tekavou] decided to recreate this popular toy in digital form instead to give it more capabilities. 

The build relies on an Inkplate e-paper screen as a display, which is probably as close you can get in appearance to the aluminium dust and glass screen used in an Etch-a-Sketch. The display is hooked up to an ESP32 microcontroller, which is charged with reading inputs from a pair of rotary encoders. In standard drawing mode, it emulates the behavior of an Etch-A-Sketch, with the ESP32 drawing to the e-paper display as the user turns the encoders to move the cursor. However, it has a magical “undo” feature, where pressing the encoder undoes the last movement, allowing you to craft complex creations without having to get every move perfect on your first attempt. As a fun aside, [Tekavou] also included a fun Snake game. More specifically, it’s inspired by NIBBLES.BAS, a demo program included with Microsoft QBasic back in the day.

We’ve seen all kinds of Etch-A-Sketch builds around these parts, including this impressive roboticized version. Video after the break.