Plotty Bird: flappy bird on the HP7440A pen plotter | Hacker News Reader

Plotty Bird: flappy bird on the HP7440A pen plotter

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288 pointsluu28 comments

The most insane device in this vein IMO is the Panasonic Penwriter. It's a four color typewriter (!) and plotter. Yes. It was using pens to write whatever you typed. And this was in 1985! If it'd been more reliable (surprise: it wasn't) it would've taken the world by storm. (I think Brother had one too.)

Lately someone worked it out how to connect it to a modern PC. https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/7936/3722

PC Magazine review from 1985: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Dwvc24nC0IQC&pg=PA67&lpg...

I'm sad to find there aren't any videos on YouTube of this Panasonic Penwriter printing something. If you or anyone you know has access to one of these device then please consider sharing a video!

Here's another review from an old electronics magazine, it's in page 49 of the PDF: https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Hands-On-Electr...

This is really neat. If you got a large-format X-Y pen plotter, you could get it to play D&D, exploring a large dungeon map, having skirmishes, etc. This would be even better with a flatbed plotter, rather than a rolling one.

I love these devices, though they're expensive to run. We used the large-format HP pen plotters for various large software analysis&design diagrams, and for keeping huge project management charts posted. On the side, I wrote an optimizer that would take an HP-GL file and optimize for pen travel (shorten time spent between pen-up and pen-down positions for various graphics operations) and for pen changes.

> though they're expensive to run

The pens are expensive? Or they use some special paper? Or they wear through some component like belts? What's the expensive bit?

The TCO of the large X-Y pen plotters seemed subjectively expensive, for hobby purposes, which I suspect is most of the reason to still use a pen plotter. Large paper (maybe you can use the current inkjet ones), expensive pens that you go through quickly (I don't know whether they're made anymore, or whether there's a viable DIY way to keep them refilled and working, or to adapt current off-the-shelf non-plotter pens), and keeping the mechanics of old machines working (and perhaps stockpiling backup/parts units, when you can find them).

The original pens are, AFAICT, somewhat hard to come by, but we modded the pen carousel and have a 3d printed holder to put more modern pens in. With this mod, the TCO doesn't seem to high, although I didn't initially purchase/set it up, and I haven't had to do serious maintenance yet.

But you can throw a pen into any gantry mechanism, whether that's a cheap laser like the k40 or a hobby router like the xcarve, or a kit-built machine like cncrouterparts sells.

These are cheap and ubiquitous. Most of them speak gcode not hpgl, but that's just a firmware tweak or a postprocessor change.

What you say sounds promising, and maybe better than trying to keep a large HP pen plotter running.

That hashtag (plottertwitter) is one of the few exciting, non-hateful things left on Twitter. Great stuff.

There’s a friendly in-person community too, in SF and NYC (next NYC meetup is in a few weeks: https://plotterpeople.github.io/nyc.html)

The memories of the game and the subsequent rise and then the fall (if you want to call it that) of it. Does anybody have any updates on the developer and the game?

Looks like Dong Nguyen's company has been making some games since: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DotGears

I love this so much. Reminds me of that old Radiohead remix.

Actually, it’s Friday, let’s post it!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20123805

This, and everything else in the #plottertwitter hashtag, seems super cool. Are there any good resources for exploring this space and getting into it?

If you're interested in algorithmic drawing, https://turtletoy.net is a nice little toy to play around in and it uses the same primitive operations as most plotters (pen up and down, move to coordinate). One popular plotter is AxiDraw which can be controlled in a multitude of ways including an Inkscape plugin and a REST-API.

I just realized such plotters can be useful in many cool applications (eg diy pcb).

Where can I get hold of one for cheap?

Ebay has a tonne of them. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m...

My dad used a 3D printer with a Dremel attached to carve PCBs. The PCBs were those that you normally etch, i.e. they had a full copper coating.

We used to use the top end of the HP plotter range (approx. £12k) when I worked at one of the Big consulting engineers.

I recall we used to move them into the aircon computer room so we could run them over night for increased accuracy.

You could possibly get a very cheap 3D printer and rig it for 2D plotting fairly easily (using the printer itself to manufacture the missing parts even!)

Yet another fun reason to get a pen plotter!! It seems that there are plenty of examples on eBay, maybe even if it doesn't work a retrofit would be a fun project?

A pen plotter is just a 3D printer with a very short Z axis and a pen instead of a hotend. Should be pretty easy to build one cheaply.

The toolchanger in the video is very nifty, though. Not an essential feature in my opinion, and no doubt the most difficult and expensive part.

That was actually was cooler than I thought it would be.

This was really cool in person!

Can you "play" this in real-time?

https://github.com/WesleyAC/plotty-bird

> It works by streaming HP-GL commands to the plotter in real time - the game gets around 20 "frames" per second.

According to the GitHub page, yes.

Someone activate the Brett Victor alarm.

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