etch a sketch

39 Articles

Robotic Etch-a-Sketch Draws Grayscale Images

February 6, 2012 by 14 Comments

[Patrick] decided to make a computer controlled etch-a-sketch. While the idea is not that new, there is always a different way to accomplish a goal. An Arduino is used to control a pair of stepper motors which were sourced for pretty cheap, and even came with their own driver. Next a stand was mocked up using foam board, which helps determine where all the parts should live.

Next was a way to attach the steppers to the knobs, gears would be used and a collet meant for model airplanes was sourced to make the mechanical connection between gear and shaft. With everything set in place via foam board and paper printouts, it is off to get some thin plywood. The plywood is sent though a laser cutter creating most of the stand and gears. Now its all software, a program was whipped up for OSX which converts low res pictures into squiggly lines perfect for the etch-a-sketch to draw on its screen.

The results are quite impressive, join us after the break for a quick video.

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Two DJ Hero Controllers Turned Into A Giant Etch A Sketch

October 30, 2011 by 12 Comments

[Ryan] sent in a little project he’s been working on. After he got his hands on a pair of DJ Hero controllers, he figured he needed to pull controller data off them.

After plugging in his two DJ Hero controllers to a breakout board, [Ryan] discovered the turntables communicate on an I2C bus. A Teensy was thrown into the mix, and work began on decoding the turntable output. [Ryan] figured out that by pulling 23 bytes from the turn table, he was left with the necessary data. Byte 20 is the state of the green, red, and blue buttons, byte 21 is the distance traveled, and byte 23 indicates clockwise or counter-clockwise. After [Ryan] figured out how to pull data off his DJ Hero controllers, the only thing left to do was build a giant Etch A Sketch on a 55 inch TV.

By the time the Etch A Sketch was completed, [Ryan] figured out that he had a gigantic rotary encoder – perfect for some classic MAME action. He started up MAME and loaded up Cameltry and Off The Wall. The DJ Hero controllers seem to work just fine, even if the hunched-over [Ryan] can’t beat the levels.

Etch-a-Sketch Automatically Draws A Tribute To Hack A Day

August 5, 2011 by 8 Comments

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We have seen quite a few automated Etch-a-Sketch machines in our time, but when [Jason] wrote in to share his take on the subject, it came with a nice bribe attached. We are vain. It’s not something we are proud of, but when it comes to seeing the Hack a Day logo drawn out by a robot, consider us sold.

[Jason] has several CNC router builds under his belt, and thought it would be fun to automate his Etch-a-Sketch, a toy he loved as a child. He cut some gears and a face plate for the toy with his new CNC machine, then got busy programming his Propeller microcontroller to do his bidding.

A piece CNC software handles the conversion of a bitmap image to an outline, which is then converted to a CNC cutting path. The cutting path is translated into x/y coordinates by a bit of C++ code, before being fed into the microcontroller, which is running a small SPIN application he calls RoboSketch. The Propeller takes care of the rest, quickly drawing the image or pattern to the Etch-a-Sketch.

Continue reading if you would like to see a video of [Jason’s] tribute to Hack a Day, and don’t miss some of our previous automated Etch-a-Sketch coverage if this is something on your to-do list.

Continue reading “Etch-a-Sketch Automatically Draws A Tribute To Hack A Day” →

CNC Etch-a-Sketch Draws On Itself

March 14, 2011 by 9 Comments

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Having never been any good with an Etch-a-Sketch, [Ben] decided it was time to tame the children’s toy that had taunted him for so long. He received one in a gift exchange a few years back and hung onto it, recently digging it out again to fit it with some CNC components.

Using his RepRap, he printed a set of mounting plates and gears to drive the Etch-a-Sketch’s dials. He installed a pair of Airpax steppers to the gears and wired them up to an ATmega AT90 USB board he had sitting around. He installed RepRap firmware on the microcontroller, since it has a built-in gcode interpreter, making it easy for him to upload any gcode file to the Etch-a-Sketch for drawing.

You can see a quick demonstration of the device in action below. He converted a spiral image to gcode, then uploaded it to the Etch-a-Sketch – the machine does the rest. It draws pretty quickly as well – [Ben] even suggests that he could probably get it moving fast enough to melt the stylus!

It would be great to see the Etch-a-Sketch configured to support an online interface. That way he could allow people to upload images to the device, later showing off the artwork in a web gallery not unlike the LOL Shield Theatre we featured last week.

[via Make]

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Etch-a-Sketch Computer Is A Surprisingly Simple Hack

January 31, 2011 by 12 Comments

We’re not sure whether to call this an Etch-a-Sketch upgrade or a computer interface downgrade but either way it’s unique. [Martin Raynsford] added a familiar red frame to his computer monitor with classic white knobs that control horizontal and vertical cursor movement. There’s even the click option by pressing the buttons in and, as you can see after the break, the modifications result in a perfectly usable digital Etch-a-Sketch. We’ve seen a lot of computer controlled versions of the toy which use fancy parts and take quite a bit of skill to build. This mimicry of the functionality is easy to build and the idea is genius in its simplicity. [Martin] separated the encoder wheels from a mouse. He placed each on one of the knobs and ran wires for sensors and micro-switches back to the original PCB which is stuck to the back of the monitor. From the computer’s point of view it looks and acts like a normal mouse but this is so much more fun (and less productive). Continue reading “Etch-a-Sketch Computer Is A Surprisingly Simple Hack” →

Propeller Takes Step-a-Sketch To A New Level

February 4, 2010 by 25 Comments

[Mpark’s] propeller controlled Etch-a-Sketch is well built and very accurate. He was inspired by the Step-a-Sketch project and he’s carried that design through to a stunning conclusion. The driver board was built around a Parallax Propeller P8X32A microcontroller. But this isn’t just a serial controller board for connecting the hardware to a PC running CNC software. He’s included TV out and a keyboard port so that programming can be done on the chip itself.

In the video after the break you can see how precise the plotting is on the Etch-a-Sketch. It is well mounted but also benefits from some software compensation for the toy’s imprecise controls. [Mpark] has also included an erase function that tilts the frame upside-down a few times. This is used not only to erase a drawing but to hide the line created when moving the stylus into its starting position.

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Step-a-sketch

January 4, 2010 by 13 Comments

[Chris] is getting his feet wet with Computer Numerical Control starting with an Etch-a-Sketch interface. This is a great way to start out because the really tough parts of the project are already inside of the toy. He’s replaced the two white knobs with stepper motors and connected them through a mosfet network to a PIC 16f84a. The PIC then gets its commands from a computer via the parallel port.

A video of the CNC machine can be seen after the break. He needs to add a frame to increase the precision of the images drawn but this first attempt is pretty good. We prefer to have the computer in charge of the design because controlling an Etch-a-Sketch with a mouse doesn’t make our drawings any better. Continue reading “Step-a-sketch” →