This project was featured in the Feb/March 2016 issue of Make: magazine and on the Make: website! The Make website has an awesome build video.
When you turn it on, Thinking Man grabs a random post title from reddit.com/r/showerthoughts and prints it out.
When you turn it on, Thinking Man grabs a random post title from reddit.com/r/showerthoughts and prints it out.
When you first plug it in or press the button on the back of the neck, a post is downloaded and printed.
The thermal printer came from Sparkfun.
The guts include an Arduino Mega, and an ESP8266-based wifi module that I have hooked up to a 3.3v voltage regulator and logic level converter. This photo shows power coming from a bench power supply and a buck converter, but it can be powered by a 9v 2a wall wart.
I adapted the code from the Hackaday ESP8266 demo.