Schlagwort: Etch-a-Sketch

  • Hacking an Etch-A-Sketch with a Raspberry Pi and camera: Etch-A-Snap!

    Hacking an Etch-A-Sketch with a Raspberry Pi and camera: Etch-A-Snap!

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Kids of the 1980s, rejoice: the age of the digital Etch-A-Sketch is now!

    What is an Etch-A-Sketch

    Introduced in 1960, the Etch-A-Sketch was invented by Frenchman André Cassagnes and manufactured by the Ohio Art Company.

    The back of the Etch-A-Sketch screen is covered in very fine aluminium powder. Turning one of the two directional knobs runs a stylus across the back of the screen, displacing the powder and creating a dark grey line visible in the front side.

    can it run DOOM?

    yes

    The Etch-A-Sketch was my favourite childhood toy. So you can imagine how excited I was to see the Etch-A-Snap project when I logged into Reddit this morning!

    Digital Etch-A-Sketch

    Yesterday, Martin Fitzpatrick shared on Reddit how he designed and built Etch-A-Snap, a Raspberry Pi Zero– and Camera Module–connected Etch-A-Sketch that (slowly) etches photographs using one continuous line.

    Etch-A-Snap is (probably) the world’s first Etch-A-Sketch Camera. Powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero (or Zero W), it snaps photos just like any other camera, but outputs them by drawing to an Pocket Etch-A-Sketch screen. Quite slowly.

    Unless someone can show us another Etch-A-Sketch camera like this, we’re happy to agree that this is a first!

    Raspberry Pi–powered Etch-A-Sketch

    Powered by four AA batteries and three 18650 LiPo cells, Etch-A-Snap houses the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero and two 5V stepper motors within a 3D-printed case mounted on the back of a pocket-sized Etch-A-Sketch.

    Photos taken using the Raspberry Pi Camera Module are converted into 1-bit, 100px × 60px, black-and-white images using Pillow and OpenCV. Next, these smaller images are turned into plotter commands using networkx. Finally, the Raspberry Pi engages the two 5V stepper motors to move the Etch-A-Sketch control knobs, producing a sketch within 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the level of detail in the image.

    Build your own Etch-A-Snap

    On his website, Martin goes into some serious detail about Etch-A-Snap, perfect for anyone interested in building their own, or in figuring out how it all works. You’ll find an overview with videos, along with breakdowns of the build, processing, drawing, and plotter.

    Website: LINK

  • How to mod your Etch A Sketch, or Toy Story in real life

    How to mod your Etch A Sketch, or Toy Story in real life

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    We’d like to file this under ‘things we wish we’d had when we were younger’. Who else is envious of the kids of today and all the cool things they can make with our old classic toys?

    Etch A Sketch Robot – Elephant

    Read about how this works on my blog! http://sunnybala.com/2018/09/10/python-etch-a-sketch.html

    To a wave of upvotes and comments, Sunny Balasubramanian shared their Etch A Sketch project on Reddit, including all the information and code you need to build your own. Thanks, Sunny!

    Dismantling the toys of our childhoods

    The physical set up of the automated Etch A Sketch is pretty simple: motors attached to couplers replace the original plastic nobs, and a connected Raspberry Pi 3 controls the motors as directed by the code.

    Etch a Sketch modded with a Raspberry Pi

    For stability, Sunny attached a wooden block to the plastic housing that keeps the motors in place.

    Coding new life into an Etch A Sketch

    Sunny explains:

    There’s a few different ways to go about this portion of the project. When I started out, I googled to see if anyone had done things like this before. A few projects popped up. They seemed to approach the drawing in one of two ways. I wanted to do it in a fully automated way where the only input is a picture and the output is a cleanly drawn image.

    The code Sunny ended up using first takes an image and simplifies it into a line drawing using Canny edge detection. It then turns each pixel to a node and draws a path between the nodes, connecting them one by one. So that the Etch A Sketch draws the picture, the Raspberry Pi then directs the motors to follow the connections and create uncannily precise sketches.

    Head to Sunny’s website for more information about their project, and download the full code from GitHub.

    Two down, more to go…

    With this automated Etch A Sketch, and this talking Fisher Price Chatter Telephone, the Raspberry Pi community is well on the way to recreating the entire Toy Story cast, and we are fully on board with that!

    A GIF of Toy Story characters

    So what’s next? A remote-controlled Slinky? A falling with style flying Buzz Lightyear? What would you build?

    Website: LINK