Planet Arduino

Last year, Moscow-based artist Dmitry Morozov — known by many as ::vtol:: — came up with a far less modern way of taking selfies. The Maker modified an old Brother SX-4000 typewriter to create portraits in the form of ASCII art.

The machine, called “i/o,” is controlled by an Arduino Mega and works by capturing an image using an iSight camera (with the help of a lamp for proper lighting), converting it into ASCII art using Pure Data and MAX/MSP, and then gradually printing it onto a piece of paper — one alphanumeric character at a time.

To enable easy documentation of pin assignments, BusyDuckMan created a couple of ASCII art of Arduino Uno and Mega boards marking ports, PWM and coms. You can now then simply copy and paste as a comment into your code and document in an easy way how the arduino is connected to other devices:

They can be pasted into code comments, (use /* and */ in the arduino IDE to create a block comment). They can also be useful in forums, when you need a quick arduino diagram, but don’t want to fire up an image editor.

[vtol] is quickly becoming our favorite technological artist. Just a few weeks ago he graced us with a Game Boy Camera gun, complete with the classic Game Boy printer. Now, he’s somehow managed to create even lower resolution images with a modified typewriter that produces ASCII art images.

As with everything dealing with typewriters, machine selection is key. [vtol] is using a Brother SX-4000 typewriter for this build, a neat little daisy wheel machine that’s somehow still being made today. The typewriter is controlled by an Arduino Mega that captures an image from a camera, converts it to ASCII art with Pure Data and MAX/MSP, then slowly (and loudly) prints it on a piece of paper one character at a time.

The ASCII art typewriter was recently shown at the 101 Festival where a number of people stood in front of a camera and slowly watched a portrait assemble itself out of individual characters. Check out the video of the exhibit below.