After building the TwitterMatrixTicker with my old Citizen 120D and the Raspberry Pi, I played a bit with my old POS Thermal printer. Especially to use it in my shop in Frankfurt City in the shop window as a gimmick.
Connecting the printer was easy, as easy as connecting the matrix printer 1 week before. The script has been modified slightly to understand the german "üäöß" special letters.
The basic setup is working. Next step will be a wifi stick to let it run wireless in the shopwindow.
One question still needs to be solved:
what keyword(s) should it react on?

hmmm. I'll post some pictures soon





webdoctor

hahah what a great fun:
imagine an old Matrix printer connected to your Raspberry Pi, printing out tweets for you instantly...



Sounds easy? well, not _that_ easy...
First of all I connected my RPi to the old Citizen 120D Matrix printer, finding out that the micro computer does not recognize it as printer. bummer...
A quick search told me that its a missing module named usblp.ko. And the worst thing is: you need to crosscompile your kernel in order to get this Module
I followed the instructions on elinux: http://elinux.org/Rpi_kernel_compilation. It took the whole evening to download all tools, kerneal sources and to compile the thing.

ok ... Today, very early i got to install and boot the kernel and the module and tried to run the TwitterMatrixTicker script i found ( http://blog.thelifeofkenneth.com/2012/0 ... tweet.html ) to output the twittersearch for my login direct on the printer.
guess: not working: the device /dev/usb/lp0 needs to be chmodded
so i did sudo chmod 666 /dev/usb/lp0 and .....
tadaaaa ... a first hello appeared after echo hello >/dev/usb/lp0

thats it...

now i can use it in my showcase in Frankfurt to attract people ;)


p.s. I have problems initializing the printer. the USB-Parallel port device is messing around with the old printer on startup. to use it, disconnect it, send a file to the printer, connect it and then its working...

now c'mon and twitter to @masterhit

another quiet brilliant team evening is ending.
thanks blackwolf, aequitas, rehcil
<3 trackmania <3

---------------------------------------------------
and here a teaser for next week:

think about what can be done with a raspbery pi, a funny script, and an old P.O.S. printer with an usb-centronics interface.

about 2 years ago i wrote about an independent game called knytt stories: a perfect playable, moody platformer with brilliant (retro) grafics by a guy called nifflas
as i opened up nintendos 3ds shop last week i discovered a game called night sky. by the promoted video and screendumps i thought that this nearly looked like knytt.
a further investigation brought that niffla is of course also the author of night sky...
Its not freeware as knytt stories, and its not a budget game for 1 or 3,50 €. the pricetag says 10 euro, and what shall i say, its worth every cent.

I LOVE IT

whats it all about? a mixture of marble madness and knytt stories \o/ the 3d effect is not necessary to play the 2d game (just like in new super mario bros 2)

i'll post some pics later... first i have to play a bit
..... 5 h later... the energy is low ;-)
i've found some pictures on nintendo.com with a little summary



imho this is one of the best 3ds games released so far. but it also means niffla is not the small independent programmer anymore. anyway, i am happy to have this game.

I've found a video reviewing da ting



have fun, stay young, stay curious

webdoktor

Why don't they do anything against this brutal injustice?
un be liev a ble

Its officially springtime since yesterday and we stil have to suffer this temperatures. And from what I heard it's getting even worse!

I spur the government into action! Mrs. Merkel, do something:

Spring, NOW!

Frühling, JETZT!