How to make the typewriter?

  • Kokos
    28th Jul 2017 Member 0 Permalink

    Hello,guys.I have a little question.How to make the typewriter using ARAY?I looked for ARAY tutorials on YouTube,and for "typewriter" in TPT.Somebody,please,explain me,how to make it or send the link to the tutorial.

  • zaccybot2
    28th Jul 2017 Member 0 Permalink

    There isn't really any tutorial for this. Just read the wiki pages for ARAY, BRAY and Some Conductors maybe.

  • Mrprocom
    28th Jul 2017 Moderator 2 Permalink
    @Kokos (View Post)
    I'm guessing you want to make something like this:


    If so, I will oversimplify it and explain the basic concept behind it, then it's your job to build upon it and make it fully automated and functional.

    First, you need to know how ARAY and BRAY function, also some knowledge about other electronics. If you don't, you can refer to The Complete Electronics Tutorial. I explained some basic ARAY/BRAY stuff in one of my previous posts, you can check it out from here.

    So I first made this, a thing where you can shoot ARAYs horizontally or vertically, it can create a 5x7 box of BRAY, the size largely depends on the font you want to display the text in, mine should've been 7x7, but I reduced the width to 5 because I will only cover the letters A, B and C (they are all 5 pixels in width), letters like W are 7 pixels in width. Also, each ARAY can be shot individually without causing the others to shoot:

    image

    With that thing, I could shoot the ARAYs in a specific order to make the letter A. Of course, you should know that when two beams of BRAY intersect, they create a solid pixel of BRAY in where they intersect. I used the space bar to pause and unpause and I also used the F shortcut to advance to the next frame. Note that I shot the ones at the side one by one because it wouldn't have worked if I had done it all in one frame (thanks to @LBPHacker for helping me figure that out):

    image

    Now let's automate this process. I used a bunch of WIFIs with different channels for each ARAY. I also replaced METL with INWR because METL can't receive spark from WIFI. I also made a module for each letter that contains WIFIs linking to the ones connected to the ARAYs (I put them in a good order so that they are easy to modify to make new letters), I also used DLAY with a specific temp to add delay. I made four of those: one that makes a solid 5x7 BRAY rectangle, another than makes the letter A, another for B and another for C:

    image

    It's also easy to know which module is for which letter, just toggle [FIND] mode using the Ctrl+F shortcut, and then select WIFI from the element selector to view all WIFIs in the current simulation, this is what I got:

    image

    This is pretty much it! of course, the module method I used isn't that genius, but it's alright, you could come up with a more compact way (just like the one used in that save). Also, I didn't demonstrate this, but to make it print out more than one letter, you just paste those ARAY modules next to each other (with some spaces) and figure out a way to block all modules except the one corresponding to the location of where the next letter should be, in that save, SWCH was used, I couldn't get it to work with the time I had, but it's definitely possible. Of course, you will also have to make a keyboard with a bunch of WIFIs too!

    Oh and more stuff to say:
    • I used a Lua script called Texter to help me create those letters, I used the default font. If you don't know anything about Lua scripts in TPT, you can read about them in my reference from here.
    • To help me make those WIFIs more quickly, I used a Lua script called set wifi v2.
    • If you didn't know about that F or Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut and you want to learn more of them, you can check out a list of shortcuts I made from here.

    Good luck!

    Edit: If you want to inspect my save closely:

    I will probably delete it at some point.
    Edited once by Mrprocom. Last: 28th Jul 2017
  • Kokos
    29th Jul 2017 Member 0 Permalink

    @Mrprocom (View Post)

     Man,Thank you very much!You really helped me,and I am going to try to build the "typers" of some letters.Thank you!