Gigantic Wall-Mounted Digital Etch A Sketch Can Automatically Draw Art

BenB116 (AKA Ben Bernstein) built this gigantic wall-mounted digital Etch A Sketch that is capable of automatically drawing pristine art.

Cameron Coward
3 years agoArt / 3D Printing

The classic Etch A Sketch drawing toy was first presented way back in 1959, making it approximately the same age as the state of Hawaii. Digital technology was still in its infancy at the time, which forced inventor André Cassagnes to rely entirely on mechanical ingenuity. The Etch A Sketch is essentially a manually-operated 2D plotter with a stylus in place of a pen. That stylus scrapes aluminum powder off of the inside of the screen, leaving behind a dark line. Fortunately, we do have digital technology today that is very accessible. Redditor BenB116 (AKA Ben Bernstein) took advantage of that to build this gigantic wall-mounted digital Etch A Sketch that is capable of automatically drawing pristine art.

While the concept is simple, actually drawing on an Etch A Sketch is very difficult, because the knobs translate to linear movement that makes curves difficult to draw and the fact that you can’t move the internal stylus without drawing a line. This huge digital Etch A Sketch follows the same rules, which makes it equally difficult to draw with. BenB116 readily admits that he lacks the skill to draw effectively using his own creation, which is why he gave it the ability to draw by itself. Images can be fed to a script and converted into a series of “toolpaths,” which are essentially plotter commands for the digital Etch A Sketch to follow. It still can’t “lift” the virtual stylus, but it is capable of easily producing curved lines and hatch shading.

The screen that BenB116 used for this project is actually an LCD TV that is somewhere between 32” and 42”, which should give you an idea of just how massive this Etch A Sketch is. The iconic red frame was 3D-printed in several small sections that were joined together using wood filler and then covered in vinyl film. The knobs are attached to stepper motors equipped with rotary encoders. That setup lets a person manually turn the knobs to draw and lets the Raspberry Pi to turn the knobs itself. When it is automatically drawing, you can see the knobs turning themselves which is way cooler than if drawing was done purely in software. On boot up, the Raspberry Pi launches a drawing program that leaves a line wherever the cursor travels. A script translates the knob movement into relative cursor position changes. This project may have cost about 100 times a regular Etch A Sketch, but we can safely assume that André Cassagnes would have approved.

Cameron Coward
Writer for Hackster News. Proud husband and dog dad. Maker and serial hobbyist.
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