“Hello World”, LEGO-style - Macenstein

“Hello World”, LEGO-style

This is probably the coolest thing you are apt to see all day. Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader Benton for the tip!

Writes creator Adam:

“Lego felt tip 110” printer connected to an Apple Mac.

I designed/built/coded it all from scratch including analog motor electronics, sensors and printer driver, the USB interface uses a “wiring” board.

FAQ: Track name? “Christopher and Raphael just popper Shinichi Osawa distortion disco edit”

FAQ: How long did this take? Hard to say, maybe 3 weeks working evenings.

FAQ: Just a remake of the 1092a? No, I’d never seen the 1092a until now. However some of the parts came from a 8094 kit amongst others many years ago. It is made to my own design, but I acknolwedge influences and the great work of the official lego designers !

FAQ: Does this use mindstorms. Nope, wiring demo board + homemade analog electronics and sensors.

FAQ: DPI? Dots per inch? Approx 75 DPI

FAQ: PPM? Pages per minute? Maybe 1 is pushing it, I sped things up a little in the video editing to keep it interesting to watch 🙂

FAQ: Full color version/more colours? Originally I was going to do 3 colour version, but I had to simplify as only have 4 lego motors.

FAQ: Open source, schematics etc. Yes, I’ll try to get around to this soon.

FAQ: Wrote your own driver? Yes, how sad is that!!

FAQ: Are? you using some sort of MCU demo board(the black pcb)? Yes. [1] http://wiring.org.co/hardware/

FAQ: Mac vs PC abuse. Video not meant as a Mac advert and I’m sorry if the Apple logo offends anyone. I just find them easier to use.

FAQ: Felt tip damage drying up? Yes this is a problem, but one felt tip usually lasts for quite a few pages.

Comments
8 Responses to ““Hello World”, LEGO-style”
  1. Abraham Figueroa says:

    That’s off the hook!

  2. Tim F. says:

    Saw this on reddit earlier today and I was wondering what the song was. Awesome.

  3. Jonro says:

    Too cool for words.

  4. David says:

    WOW – speechless! Awesomeness manifested *lol*

  5. Kevin says:

    This is the coolest thing I have ever seen!!!! Ya know I bet Lego would pay you some serious cash for this idea!!! I know we would buy one!! Great job!!!

  6. What a neat creation. How long did it take you to program it? Making your own printer driver sounds compacted. Props!

  7. Andy says:

    Could you please start selling them?

  8. Hunter says:

    Thats good, can i buy it?!!

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