Many individuals love the Raspberry Pi (us included). Not solely are the computing boards low cost, however you are able to do a lot with them. Wild, fantastic initiatives spring up on a regular basis with RPi boards as a central piece. The newest creation to catch our eye may simply rank as probably the most astonishing: a truck remodeled right into a dot matrix printer.

As noticed by Tom’s Hardware, YouTuber Ryder Damen (who runs the channel Ryder Calm Down) makes use of a Raspberry Pi to manage his homebrew “printer,” which includes a pickup truck, water, and a complete array of drugs to spell out messages on the bottom. Damen calls it “skywriting, but on the road.”

In the video, Damen explains how the concept got here to be (watching vehicles paint markers on the highway), in addition to the method of developing the “printer” and the supplies used. A plywood and a trailer hitch kind the body of the rig, with solenoids, valves, and hoses then mounted to the wooden to function printer components. The solenoids management the valves—when 12V present is utilized to them, they open. Meanwhile, the hoses break up the water stream from a central level (a pump and a bucket filled with water) to every valve.

Controlling the setup is the Raspberry Pi, which is related to every valve via a relay and the solenoids. Damen created an internet site on the gadget, on which you’ll sort the message you need and select the velocity of the print job. (Damen feedback within the video you could additionally select the font, however “only one font works.”) The message is then transformed to a picture, analyzed, after which divided into segments based mostly on the variety of valves on the truck. The code determines whether or not every valve is in an space thought-about mild or darkish: If darkish, the valve spurts water. If mild, valve stays off.

Ryder Damen / YouTube

As a part of the video, Damen shares a number of the ups and downs of bringing the venture to fruition, full with all of the troubleshooting concerned at every stage of the method. (When it appeared just like the Raspberry Pi might need been killed off by the primary relay used, I truly gasped in sympathy—as Damen notes, the Raspberry Pi has been onerous to return by and changing it might be troublesome.) It’s a enjoyable journey to comply with, particularly in the event you spent years round dot matrix printers.

If you occur to need to construct your individual road-writing truck, the code for the project is now out there on GitHub—and the Raspberry Pi Foundation says supply will soon increase in the end, making it attainable to get your fingers on one once more. But if that’s not your deal, Damen’s chronicles of different initiatives can entertain you as an alternative. As Tom’s Hardware shares in its protection of the dot matrix truck, you may also watch porch pirates get their comeuppance or construct your individual Christmas lights from Stranger Things.