Overview
The classic toy Etch-A-Sketch has been written with a controller to see it move by itself.
Explanation
The pictures can be drawn automatically by showing up different angled lines caused by an order by the chip to the motors. The chip will have to connect to a computer using the UART in order to obtain several pictures. The knobs are connected to 2 stepper motors being controlled by an Atmel microcontroller.
The computer, microcontroller, stepper control, and Etch-A-Sketch are the 4 main sections in the setup. They have a small communication script in between each section as all 4 sections are relatively decoupled from each other. This design is in reference with the 7 layers of a standard computer network which are separated from each other.
The microcontroller program contains 3 functions where each is selected by one of the 3 buttons. The first button is a testing procedure that loads specified values in memory. The second button loads these values from the UART input. The third button handles sending the necessary voltages to the next step. The knobs on the Etch-A-Sketch are driven by using a couple of stepper motors.
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