Ben Heck's DIY Calculator Episode -- Episode 192

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Ben, Felix and Max take us back to 1972 and the invention of the first calculator this week, then decide to hack their own! Watch as they use the Raspberry Pi Compute Module and a Formlabs SLA 3D printer to create their own graphing calculator.

You can find the build files for this episode here or download as a zip.

Top Comments

Jens_G over 6 years ago

How I found the Source of this Project ?
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Former Member over 8 years ago

This was an awesome video - well done, guys!

Is there any way that I can have one of these made for me?

I am NOT a hardware guy at all, but I am a retired computer programmer, and would like to actually turn it into a graphing calculator with gForth on the Raspberry Pi.

Sincerely,

- Bill
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sa-penguin over 9 years ago in reply to Former Member

Rather than blindly follow the Ben Heck design, consider alternative options [I've already mentioned using a keyboard encoder chip, TCA8418].
For LCD's look at the "Nextion" series recently on KickStarter. They aren't element14 products but they use a 4-wire [Gnd, TxD, RxD, +V] serial port that runs about 9600 by default.

Not lightning fast, but hey - it's a calculator, how fast do you really need?
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Former Member over 9 years ago

Is there anywhere that I can find more info on the TFT hat? How this was accomplished? I am using a TFT in a cramped space and knowing the solder points on this would be a big help!
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Jens_G over 9 years ago

The Idee is not new .. her is a project like this one. --> LibreCalc "www.librecalc.com/en/"
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balearicdynamics over 9 years ago in reply to Former Member

As far as what I have understood in the fast screens of this episode, if you press a button you convert the calculator to a computer, the keyboard has the qwerty characters rotated and you can rotate the display. But for every different usage there is a fixed orientation.

Enrico
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Former Member over 9 years ago

the screen could have been made a rotatable one so that if the calculator is tilted to landscape mode the screens orientation can also be changed to get a landscape view of screen.
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balearicdynamics over 9 years ago in reply to clem57

Sure, me too. But the spectacularity point of view the BHS is always great and I enjoy a lot to see it
But unfortunately it should be also technical.
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clem57 over 9 years ago in reply to balearicdynamics

I like chicanery between Ben and Felix.
Clem
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balearicdynamics over 9 years ago in reply to clem57

It seems to me. Very nice and a good escamotage for fun as the BHS is always able to do, but not to consider it as a real-life situation.

Enrico
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