VEKTORKOLLEKTOR is a mobile vector drawing machine powered by Arduino

from arduino.cc

Public art installations are a great way to express your creativity while simultaneously sharing it with others. Niklas Roy, a maker who builds interactive art installations in Berlin, Germany had the idea to create a machine that lets people draw pictures and then share them digitally too, which he calls the VEKTORKOLLEKTOR.

Designed in collaboration with Kati Hyyppä, the project consists of two parts: a joystick for operating the device and a large pen plotter to draw on a piece of paper.

The joystick assembly was made with a classic arcade joystick and a pair of arcade pushbutton switches, all placed within a small enclosure. These components are connected to a central Arduino Uno that also has an SD card for saving drawings and a small TFT display that shows a virtual drawing of what’s on the page.

The Uno communicates with a secondary Arduino Nano board in order to control the rotations of the two X/Y DC gear motors and thus the position of the drawing utensil. Positional data is gathered from a single optical encoder situated on each axis. Last but not least, a third Arduino and an MP3 Shield were added to round out the experience with chiptune-style music.