Etch-a-Sketch joins the 21st Century. Sort of...

By Julian Prokaza on Tue 24 November 2009

“Hold it upside-down and give it a shake” is second only to “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” when it comes to laptop troubleshooting, but now someone seems to have taken the suggestion just a bit too seriously.

A hacker with too much time on his hands has converted a laptop screen into an electronic Etch-a-Sketch by retro-fitting the display into an old toy casing and adding a couple of potentiometers for the knobs.

The ‘Hack-a-Sketch’ works via an open-source prototyping circuit board used that connects the potentiometers to the laptop’s USB port and it works just like you’d — as an Etch-a-Sketch, that is, not as a laptop.

A mercury tilt switch inside the lid means that you can even shake the laptop to clear the screen — although the IBM ThinkPad used for the project almost certainly has a built-in accelerometer to protect the hard drive against potential shock damage, which the hacker seems to have missed…

There are instructions on the hacker’s site if you fancy cobbling together your own Hack-a-Sketch, but be careful when taking the toy apart — that stuff gets everywhere…

Exploded Etch-a-Sketch photo courtesy of PhotoBlog

[Project Lab via Make]

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