In the days of yore, telex machines and dot-matrix printers with continuous paper feeds produced data in hardcopy form in offices around the world. [Jan Derogee] wanted a bit of that old-world charm and started building an RSS news printer with a venerable old printer in his possession.
The build is based on an ESP8266, where the Wi-Fi enabled microcontroller can easily jump online and request RSS feeds for content. It scraps the XML files for title, description and publication date information and formats them for output to the printer. The microcontroller then spits the data out through a Commodore serial interface to a Brother HR-5C printer. Unlike the dot matrix printers of its current day, the HR-5C is a thermal printer. Once loaded with a roll of the correct paper, it can print continuously without the need for ribbons that are hard to come by.
Armed with a continuous supply of wireless internet and 210mm thermal printer paper rolls, [Jan]’s system should provide him with news summaries for years to come. We’ve also seen similar retro news decal projects before. Video after the break.
This post RSS printer gives you the printed news you want
was original published at “https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/rss-printer-gives-you-the-hard-copy-news-you-desire/”
