USA TODAY

Sure, there’s plenty of hackery going on with interactive whiteboards these days, but that doesn’t mean plain old marker-based boards have been left out of the fun completely, as evidenced by this latest contraption devised by Sprite_tm. As you can see in the video after the break, he’s managed to rig up a slightly precarious system that’ll write out any message you send it over the web, and with surprising legibility no less. To do that, Sprite salvaged some parts from an old scanner and printer, along with an ever useful microcontroller, an x/y stepper system, and some rather clever touches like an electromagnet to keep the marker on the board. He even bravely opened up the board to the public, although that unsurprisingly doesn’t appear to have lasted very long. If you want to give one a shot yourself, however, you can find most of the details you’ll need and the necessary source code by hitting up the read link below.

[Via Slash Gear]