{"id":608,"date":"2013-04-10T22:45:31","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T02:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/?p=608"},"modified":"2023-05-05T13:45:23","modified_gmt":"2023-05-05T13:45:23","slug":"typewriter-to-printer-conversion-update-getting-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/typewriter-to-printer-conversion-update-getting-close\/","title":{"rendered":"Typewriter to Printer Conversion, Update (getting close)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Good News Everybody.<\/strong> The <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Typewriter\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Typewriter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia noopener\">typewriter<\/a> (actually the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Raspberry Pi\" href=\"http:\/\/www.raspberrypi.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage noopener\">raspberry pi<\/a>)&nbsp;is now capable of picking up print jobs from my typewriter <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Application programming interface\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Application_programming_interface\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia noopener\">API<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>See yourself in the following video.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/N0nIiyLxELI\" allowfullscreen=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For now I just use a web interface to add the jobs manually but soon the jobs will come in from twitter via a hashtag or tweets towards the typewriter. It&#8217;s a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Ruby on Rails\" href=\"http:\/\/rubyonrails.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage noopener\">Ruby on Rails<\/a> App hosted on <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Heroku\" href=\"http:\/\/www.heroku.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage noopener\">Heroku<\/a> with a password protected API to make sure only the typewriter himself picks up the new jobs. Also as soon as the typewriter picks up a new job, its status changes. So based on that I can let people know when their job started \/ is done.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More Good News.<\/strong> All keys are connected now (no numbers though) and are <strong>WORKING<\/strong>!!<\/p>\n<p>Just not at the same time yet. Reason for that is that I have been trying to solder up a better control board and failed again on the design. Why I wanted to have a soldered up control board was to make it easily and quickly replaceable (modules). So a 16 pin cable would come from the raspberry pi and plug into the control board while a 32 pin cable feeds the solenoids while another one feeds the new line motor and another one the page return. Besides being able to replace things easy, I thought it would cause less issues if the table is moved since everything is soldered up and no pins can move (compared to a breadboard setup).<\/p>\n<p>That said, I will just use breadboard for now, since I lost too many parts already in soldering up control boards. I guess I am bad at that.<\/p>\n<p>I changed the ribbon, got it at Stables, no problem. Had to roll it over to the typewriters wheels by hand though. What I hear from people that worked with typewriter before (back in the days) I can roll this ribbon back and forth a few times before it will run out. Not just once. That&#8217;s good.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Camera to stream the printing process<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Although I thought I would use a webcam (<a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Universal Serial Bus\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Universal_Serial_Bus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia noopener\">USB<\/a> to raspberry pi) to make things easier (compared to a network camera because of being able to time things from the raspberry pi rather than the web app), I just had the idea to use an HTC smart phone I have sitting around (it&#8217;s actually a good phone, I use it whenever I am back in Europe). Sure enough, there are many apps around to turn that, just via <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Wi-Fi\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wi-Fi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia noopener\">WiFi<\/a>, no <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Subscriber identity module\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Subscriber_identity_module\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia noopener\">SIM card<\/a> needed, into a good network based camera. So 20 min after the idea, I got it working via &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.pas.webcam&amp;hl=en\">IP Webcam&#8221;<\/a>&nbsp;and now have a stream that is good enough to go on the website to show people their <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Twitter\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"twitter noopener\">tweets<\/a> coming out of the typewriter.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_610\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-610\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Screen-Shot-2013-04-10-at-10.39.17-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-610\" alt=\"Typewriter Beard\" src=\"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Screen-Shot-2013-04-10-at-10.39.17-PM-300x209.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"209\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-610\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Typewriter Beard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Things to figure out from here<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cartridge return is still a challenge. I am at a point where I just want to use the backspace and therefore got a very strong solenoid to do the job, but now need another voltage level to make it happen. (Workaround, really)<\/li>\n<li>Paper Size, I do like using the small cashiers rolls, since they do not need a lot of cartridge movement to set it back to the start. For tweets that is okay, since I fit about 25 characters on it anyway. If we want to get more serious, there is bigger rolls (for fax machines I have seen so far) but don&#8217;t want to worry about it too much right now.<\/li>\n<li>Hiding or Showing? There is now a lot of electronics involved. What is nicer, not to see any of them or show them all right away? Right now the typewriter table scares me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As always, if you have any ideas how to make this project better or have any questions, feel free to comment here or contact me directly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em;\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul zemanta-article-ul-image\" style=\"margin: 0; padding: 0; overflow: hidden;\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"padding: 0; background: none; list-style: none; display: block; float: left; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; width: 84px; font-size: 11px; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px;\"><a style=\"box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; padding: 2px; display: block; border-radius: 2px; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/typewriter-to-printer-progress\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; border: 0; display: block; width: 80px; max-width: 100%;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/149182380_80_80.jpg\"><\/a><a style=\"display: block; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; line-height: 12pt; height: 80px; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px;\" href=\"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/typewriter-to-printer-progress\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Typewriter to Printer: Progress!<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"padding: 0; background: none; list-style: none; display: block; float: left; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; width: 84px; font-size: 11px; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px;\"><a style=\"box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; padding: 2px; display: block; border-radius: 2px; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/typewriter-to-printer-software-update\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; border: 0; display: block; width: 80px; max-width: 100%;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/152121443_80_80.jpg\"><\/a><a style=\"display: block; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; line-height: 12pt; height: 80px; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px;\" href=\"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/typewriter-to-printer-software-update\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Typewriter to Printer: Software Update<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=d2f5d28f-6f14-4f04-92ac-e894acefea4f\"><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good News Everybody. The typewriter (actually the raspberry pi)&nbsp;is now capable of picking up print jobs from my typewriter API. See yourself in the following video. For now I just use a web interface to add the jobs manually but soon the jobs will come in from twitter via a hashtag or tweets towards the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canada-2","category-tech","category-toronto-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":959,"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michael.schwanzer.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}