We’ve covered etch-a-sketch robots before, but usually they’re not quite as fast as [Every Flavor of Robot]’s “video” etch-a-sketch, capable of drawing a full portrait in as little as a minute.

The idea comes from the motivation to make something cool for Open Sauce. Of course, most projects with a deadline come very close to missing it, and–like many an Open Sauce project–this one is no exception. Arriving in California, they realize they couldn’t access their code! Fortunately, they get a demo working where your portrait is drawn just in time.

After the event, [EFoR] sought to improve their robot. In doing so, they developer their own motor driver platform, complete with a custom PCB that can double as a Raspberry Pi hat. The software, being control theory, also needed some tweaking. Because the real world isn’t perfect, just a PID controller isn’t always enough and, in this case, they also needed to add code to account for backlash. Finally, as a finishing touch, they added a time-lapse camera so the “etchbot” could play videos by taking a picture after every frame.