Scribbler Taillight and Pen Port Light (Added)

Whit

We've been having a lot of fun over on the Nikos Fibonacci Spiral Thread scribbling with LED light by using long exposure photos.

Here is a project - "No Warranty Void" hack for the Scribbler and the S2. I call it the Scribbler Taillight. I was playing with the idea for following purposes. This could work great for LED scribbling too. I am developing a pen port mount also.

Power (9 volts) and ground come right from the programming port - not case opening is required for this hack (and thus your Warranty remains! ;-)

Photos show the following:

How an LED is fitted with pin connectors. Under the heat-shrink wrap around the Ground Leg (cathode - marked by the flat spot on the LED lense) is a resistor of the appropriate size for 9 volts and the color of the LED and its properties (Google it!) - two views. You can see the resistor under the black heat-shrink tubing.

Diagram for programming port pinout from Parallax (S2 and Scribbler are the same)

Diagram for a DB9 female pinout (show how the pins are numbered). This is marked to reflect the Scribbler and S2 power and ground. Pin 5 is ground and Pin 8 is 9 volts.

And photos of the Scribbler Taillight inserted - LED off and on.

Obviously the LED could be pointed straight up for LED scribbling, or mounted in the pen port and powered in the same way.

Give it a try and have some hacking fun!

Whit

Okay, here is the second part. Same idea for a Pen Port Light (LED). The LED is a bi-color (red/green). By reversing the polarity when plugging the LED into the programming port you can change from red to green. The frosted lens gives a more diffused light.

I shaped a wooden plug - make a hole to mount the LED and run the wires - resister again is in line (470 ohm in this case). wires are twisted and shrink tube wrapped. See attached photos and the photos. More "scribbles" over at the Nikos Fibonacci Spiral Challenge thread.

erco

This would also be a nice Activitybot project. It lacks a pen port, but it could "draw" with one or more LEDs on the breadboard.

Whit

Yes. I also thought of an idea where you could "print" dot matrix style with 5 X 7 pattern.

You would have 5 LEDs running across a bread board or mounted (width of robot) for the column,, Light the first column, turn off, advance forward a column width, light the second column and so fourth - "Serial style." A long exposure photo or composite photo (per zanadu's post over on the Nikos Fibonacci Spiral Challenge thread) and voila! - Dot matrix printing!

Whit

On the S3, we will have direct access to the hacker's port on the top of the new green bot! These accessories will be easily adaptable!

A nice update on the S3 from Ken can be found here - https://www.parallax.com/news/2016-03-01/s2-robot-“scribbling-dark”-art-project-carol-hazlett-and-update-scribbler-3

NWCCTV

Clicking on "More seems to bring me back to the original page.

Publison

NWCCTV wrote: »

Clicking on "More seems to bring me back to the original page.

Try this link:
https://www.parallax.com/news/2016-03-01/s2-robot-“scribbling-dark”-art-project-carol-hazlett-and-update-scribbler-3

Whit

Better 5 X 7 matrix alphabet attached. The one above uses half spaces too in the columns. This would work better for the proposed "printing." It also includes numbers and a few other characters.