Father Ted Kilnettle Shrine Tape Dispenser
stephencoyle.net
stephencoyle.net
My lovely horse (My lovely horse) Running through the field (Running through the field) Where are you going, with your fetlocks blowing in the wind? (All Summer)
I want to shower you with sugar lumps And ride you over fences Polish your hooves every single day And bring you to the horse dentist
(My lovely, lovely, lovely horse)
My lovely horse, (My lovely horse) You're a pony no more (You're a pony no more) Running around with a man on your back Like a train in the night... like a train in the night (I Love You Anyway) My lovely, lovely, lovely horse
I was a teenager, and some of the episodes were filmed at my school. The lovely horse video is the field behind my school where we used to sneak out during break. They even stopped class one day to film a scene at the front of the school - they used the school building as the outside of the craggy island sports center.
This design has no power saving, which means it will only last few hours tops on the batteries. This could be improved, but the current design (ESP8266 + analog IR sensor) does not really work with low power.
A good start would be to put a 2nd low-power micro on IR encoder that'd (1) count pulses (2) wake up ESP8266. This will allow one to keep complex stuff (audio out) using Arduino libraries, while small piece of hand-written code will take care low power stuff.
A more advanced design would be to get rid of ESP8266 and switch to low power MCU. If you keep audio uncompressed, a small MCU (STM8 or AVR8) is perfectly capable of playing some speech... and it will only take microamps in sleep/sense mode. You likely won't be able to use as many pre-made libraries however, so this is substantially more development time.
Just a week ago I became aware of Father Ted and watched only the show with the tape dispenser because it was recommended to me by Youtube. This article is year old, and shows up now in my feed.
This looks like the type of application which, if mass-produced, would have the electronics done on a $0.10 mask-programmed COB.
“Go on, go on, go on, go on, goes on”
Or that gives you a coup of tea instead
I mean, I wouldn't put it past Mrs Doyle if some government got in the way of her serving tea, I suppose.
> Instead of a rotary encoder to measure the tape rotation, it now uses an IR led and sensor.
I don't get it; how does this work? Are there openings at certain positions in the reel that it detects the light through? Why is this better than the rotary encoder design?
> Are there openings at certain positions in the reel
Yes, that's exactly it! The spool has holes, and there's an IR emitter/detector on either side. You can view the STLs on the GitHub repo or Printables and see for yourself.
It's better than the rotary encoder [for this project specifically] because it's cheaper and doesn't require the sensor to be a load-bearing part.
ARSE!
- know the total length of the tape, and when it's changed, and therefore predict the current radius of the roll
- a small sprung variable resistor pressing against the under side of the role
But that could be over-engineering something that almost more perfect if it's a little imperfect.
cellophane tape does emit xrays when unrolled, so correlate the strength of the radiation with the angular velocity of the roll to more precisely calculate how much tape was removed. I suspect a second photodiode may respond to the radiation.
The Father Ted Kilnettle Shrine Tape Dispenser
which is a reference to a show name Father Ted, in which a Kilnettle Shrine tape dispenser was sold as a souvenir at the Kilnettle Shrine, and brought on a plane by Father Ted in the show Father Ted.