Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer
For a while now I've started my day by unlocking my phone and scrolling through different news and social media sites to see what's going on. It's not exactly great for my mental health and I've been trying to cut down on screen time for a while. I still want to stay up-to-date though, especially after I get up in the morning.
I recently purchased a dot matrix printer from eBay, and thought it would be a great excuse to have a custom "front page" printed out and ready for me each day. So, that's what I built!
The supply list for this project was pretty small, and with the exception of the printer, most of this can be found on Amazon or other online retailers.
The printer I purchased was a Star NP-10 from what looks like the mid-80's. I can't be 100% sure, but any dot matrix printer with a serial port should do the trick. The prices range from about $80-120 USD, but I was able to get this one for about half that price because it was marked as "unsure if working".
It did need a little cleaning up and some tuning of the ink ribbon cartridge (isn't that cool, it's like a typewriter!), but after that it fired right up and ran through the test page print.
