This Attachment Makes a Truck a Dot-Matrix Water Printer



I feel that a variety of us would benefit from the skill to print messages onto public roads, however with out the worry of receiving a quotation for vandalism. Perhaps that message might be a quote from a favourite guide or a proposal — like skywriting on the bottom. Ryder discovered a sensible strategy to obtain that. He constructed an attachment that turns his truck into a large dot-matrix printer that makes use of water as ink.

This works greatest on pale asphalt, which darkens sufficient when moist to get seen distinction. It operates like an outdated dot-matrix printer, with the vertical Y axis being a number of nozzles and the horizontal X axis being time/distance. So to write down the letter “I” over and over, the entire nozzles would open for a brief time period, shut for a second, after which repeat. Writing extra complicated characters requires the coordination of the nozzles opening and shutting because the truck strikes.

A Raspberry Pi single-board laptop controls the water stream with an array of solenoid valves by a relay board. It hosts an internet interface that the consumer can entry from a pc or smartphone. The consumer enters the message they need, the pace they plan to drive at, and selects a font (although there is just one alternative proper now). The Raspberry Pi then creates a bitmap picture of the message and converts the pixels right into a consecutive collection of states for the solenoid valves.

These solenoid valves mount onto wooden connected to a trailer hitch cargo rack, with water coming by hoses from a reservoir above and feeding with gravity. When the consumer is prepared, they will begin driving on the predetermined pace and press the “print” button. The Raspberry Pi will then begin opening and shutting the valves on the correct instances to breed the picture.

On the suitable surfaces, this leaves a big message that’s fairly seen. And since it writes with water, the message is simply momentary and can evaporate shortly.

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