Purpose: In today’s world digital connections often contribute to overstimulation, our text-fax printer allows you to feel connected to your loved ones, no matter how far, while staying unplugged. Designed for moments when you might feel too anxious to be on your phone, but too lonely to stay off your phone, this device allows selected text messages to be printed with the push of a button. You can stay unplugged while receiving words of encouragement from a chosen support system.
Function: Using an Arduino Thermal printer, and hooking it up to a wifi board (which communicates to an IO server), print out text messages with a hashtag #unplugged.
Instructables: https://www.instructables.com/Unplugged-a-Text-Fax-Machine/
Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iV3wg07PS-lGe5Jdz2KdFI-DgMBBQsuD/view?usp=sharing
Process (Code & Form & Construction)
Get serial Monitor to print out messages sent
void setup() {
// Set button pin as input
pinMode(BUTTON_PIN, INPUT_PULLUP);
// Start the serial communication
Serial.begin(115200);
// Connect to Adafruit IO
io.connect();
// Subscribe to the "Text-Fax" feed
textFaxFeed->onMessage(receiveMessage);
}
void loop() {
// Ensure the connection to Adafruit IO is maintained
io.run();
// Read the state of the button
buttonState = digitalRead(BUTTON_PIN);
// Check if the button is pressed
if (buttonState == LOW) {
Serial.print("New Message: ");
Serial.println(lastReceivedMessage);
Serial.print("#unplugged \n");
}
}
void receiveMessage(AdafruitIO_Data *data) {
// Update the last received message
lastReceivedMessage = data->toString();
}Get printer to work
- On Metro
On Huzzah
Additional Parts?
Adding a Logic Shifter for the Printer on the Huzzah
Form
Back to Code
For the video, I ended up wiring my button to the printer and then printing on button push. I made a stack of random text messages and with every button push it would push out a message.
After the video I kept trying back at communicating between my metro and huzzah board with little success.
Future
I am going to keep trying to get the boards to talk to each other so they can actually print out the recieved text messages with the wifi. I think the video is pretty convincing but it would be amazing to feel that real success of it.
I also am right now using IFTTT, which limits to just me texting a certain number which was great for this project testing but in product form this would have to be its own server. It would also need to extend beyond text messages to also whatspp, bolin, wechat, and other messaging apps.
In terms of the form, I would want to see if there is a more sleek way of the printer in the book, it is tough because of size limitations. But if I took out the body of the printer and just used the mechanics I might be able to make it downsize.
Overall I learned a lot from this project, and it makes me really excited about other IoT projects. I want to keep honing this skills that we learned from this class. I think it was a great way to massage my brain as an engineer and a designer at the same time, and it makes me want to be more ambitious with my projects as well.
