flipbit

Building a Microprinter

Tuesday, 22 September 2009

Whilst reading about Papercamp I came across the concept of Microprinting. The idea is simple, take an old receipt printer and repurpose it to stream a live feed of your updates from the Internet. The idea was first mentioned by Matt Webb in his post about social letter boxes, and put into practice by Tom Taylor.

Inspired by this, I decided to make my own micro-printer. I've created a project page that lists the steps, materials, and general details required to make your own microprinter.

At 7:30 each morning I get a daily reports with information such as the tube status, weather and Google Analytics for various sites I maintain. Unlike an iPhone, I can just grab these reports off the printer and not worry about the battery running out or loosing reception on the tube. At the end of the day I shred the reports and put them out for recycling.

Examples of the weather and tube report. I cycle to work most days, so the tube report is only printed if it's raining.