• austinallegro 2 days ago

    (My lovely, lovely, lovely horse)

    My lovely horse (My lovely horse) Running through the field (Running through the field) Where are you going, with your fetlocks blowing in the wind? (All Summer)

    I want to shower you with sugar lumps And ride you over fences Polish your hooves every single day And bring you to the horse dentist

    (My lovely, lovely, lovely horse)

    My lovely horse, (My lovely horse) You're a pony no more (You're a pony no more) Running around with a man on your back Like a train in the night... like a train in the night (I Love You Anyway) My lovely, lovely, lovely horse

  • theamk 17 hours ago

    One of the hardest things in Arduino-based designs is power savings, and this one is not an exception.

    This design has no power saving, which means it will only last few hours tops on the batteries. This could be improved, but the current design (ESP8266 + analog IR sensor) does not really work with low power.

    A good start would be to put a 2nd low-power micro on IR encoder that'd (1) count pulses (2) wake up ESP8266. This will allow one to keep complex stuff (audio out) using Arduino libraries, while small piece of hand-written code will take care low power stuff.

    A more advanced design would be to get rid of ESP8266 and switch to low power MCU. If you keep audio uncompressed, a small MCU (STM8 or AVR8) is perfectly capable of playing some speech... and it will only take microamps in sleep/sense mode. You likely won't be able to use as many pre-made libraries however, so this is substantially more development time.

    • dTal an hour ago

      I think you can do even better and make one that draws no power when not in use - since the activation is a physical movement, you could design it in such a way that it closes a physical switch.

    • FionnMc 2 days ago

      I genuinely never thought I'd see Father Ted, let alone the lourdes tape dispenser on the front page of HN. What a great day.

      • mywacaday a day ago

        Sitting have a lazy late breakfast, sun is shining and this comes up, great start to the day. Showed my wife and she had the great idea that we should watch Fr. Ted from the start again. Fr. Ted first came out when I was in college in the 90s, Thursday night was the big night out for students and as new episodes of Fr Ted would air at 9pm our night out would start in a jammed pub with everyone watching it on a big screen. On a side note, not sure if this would be a sacrilegious or an ecumenical matter but having voice options for Ted, Dougal, Fr Jack, Mrs Doyle, Bishop Brennan, Fr Noel Furlong, Fr Stone, Fr Fintan Stack, Tom, Henry Sellers. That's just off the top of my head, there are many more.It was such magnificent writing and acting that characters that only appeared in one episode would still be mentioned as a joke or reference among my generation. Fond fond memories.

        • esperent 18 hours ago

          > Fr. Ted first came out when I was in college in the 90s

          I was a teenager, and some of the episodes were filmed at my school. The lovely horse video is the field behind my school where we used to sneak out during break. They even stopped class one day to film a scene at the front of the school - they used the school building as the outside of the craggy island sports center.

        • sandworm101 a day ago

          I don't believe it.

        • nabla9 2 days ago

          Talk about Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.

          Just a week ago I became aware of Father Ted and watched only the show with the tape dispenser because it was recommended to me by Youtube. This article is year old, and shows up now in my feed.

          • stavros a day ago

            Yesterday I found out about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and now I see it mentioned! Must be the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon phenomenon.

            • gizajob a day ago

              I’ve never heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon so I’m now wondering what the week ahead holds for me and the gang.

              • dymk a day ago

                That's actually now the Baader-Metahof phenomenon

            • vgeek a day ago

              This seems to be an ecumenical matter.

              • vmilner a day ago

                Did Father Ted have much impact in the US? - it always seems v British/Irish in its humour (but that’s true of Monty Python of course and that obviously made it over there)

                • kadoban 19 hours ago

                  It didn't have the cultural impact of many other shows, though certainly some people know of and have seen it. It's less well known/referenced than even Red Dwarf and other fairly niche shows in my experience.

                  • dylan604 a day ago

                    BBC America is a thing since 1998

                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_America

                    • vmilner an hour ago

                      I forget that shows from non-BBC channels in the Uk can get shown on BBC America.

                    • Padriac 11 hours ago

                      We loved it in Australia.

                    • zeristor 2 days ago

                      They could do a Mrs Doyle on that:

                      “Go on, go on, go on, go on, goes on”

                      Or that gives you a coup of tea instead

                      • anonzzzies 2 days ago

                        It's a microcake! You won't feel it going in!

                        • tempodox a day ago

                          I read somewhere that the cake is a lie.

                          • 4ugSWklu a day ago

                            You sir have just won the internet!

                            • antithesizer a day ago

                              I hear you're a redditor now, Father!

                          • Ylpertnodi a day ago

                            Does it have cocaine in it? I mean 'raisins'. I love cinnamon.

                          • Macha a day ago

                            > a coup of tea

                            I mean, I wouldn't put it past Mrs Doyle if some government got in the way of her serving tea, I suppose.

                          • userbinator a day ago

                            The logic runs on an ESP8266 microcontroller instead of a Raspberry Pi Zero, all of which means the electronics inside can be purchased for less than €10.

                            This looks like the type of application which, if mass-produced, would have the electronics done on a $0.10 mask-programmed COB.

                            • scottlamb a day ago

                              Neat project!

                              > Instead of a rotary encoder to measure the tape rotation, it now uses an IR led and sensor.

                              I don't get it; how does this work? Are there openings at certain positions in the reel that it detects the light through? Why is this better than the rotary encoder design?

                              • stephencoyle a day ago

                                Thanks!

                                > Are there openings at certain positions in the reel

                                Yes, that's exactly it! The spool has holes, and there's an IR emitter/detector on either side. You can view the STLs on the GitHub repo or Printables and see for yourself.

                                It's better than the rotary encoder [for this project specifically] because it's cheaper and doesn't require the sensor to be a load-bearing part.

                                • undefined a day ago
                                  [deleted]
                                • 10yearsalurker 12 hours ago

                                  Shoddy shoddy shoddy

                                  • anonzzzies a day ago

                                    Father, what's it all about?

                                    • austinallegro a day ago

                                      That money was just resting in my account. Ask Pat Mustard.

                                    • theoreticalmal a day ago

                                      Feck off!

                                      • Malic a day ago

                                        Dur-INK!

                                        • mikrl 21 hours ago

                                          Sacrifice??

                                          ARSE!

                                          • GJim 7 hours ago

                                            More water.

                                      • tempodox a day ago

                                        I didn't know sticky tape usage is a blessable act. TIL!

                                        • ekaryotic a day ago

                                          it's not, the dispenser is a jab at the kind of trinket stalls that form around holy sites. what i don't understand is how the dispenser compensates for the changing radius of the tape roll in order to measure accurately. i suspect that it doesn't.

                                          • stephencoyle a day ago

                                            You're right that it doesn't consider changing diameter, though I did contemplate some approaches for doing that. But, since it only needs whole-inch resolution, using the diameter of a half-full roll of tape gets close enough for novelty purposes.

                                            • implements a day ago

                                              How about measuring the linear tape motion in a similar way that laser mice measure surface movement?

                                              • stephencoyle a day ago

                                                That's a cool idea! It's all open source, and forks/remixes are encouraged, so feel free to give that a whirl. :)

                                            • samwillis a day ago

                                              Two ways to make it:

                                              - know the total length of the tape, and when it's changed, and therefore predict the current radius of the roll

                                              - a small sprung variable resistor pressing against the under side of the role

                                              But that could be over-engineering something that almost more perfect if it's a little imperfect.

                                              • ekaryotic a day ago

                                                thought of a third way:

                                                cellophane tape does emit xrays when unrolled, so correlate the strength of the radiation with the angular velocity of the roll to more precisely calculate how much tape was removed. I suspect a second photodiode may respond to the radiation.

                                                • fecal_henge a day ago

                                                  Id just weigh the roll.

                                                • arp242 a day ago

                                                  Divine intervention, presumably. They don't bless those tape dispensers for nothing.

                                                  • tempodox a day ago

                                                    Divine intervention sounds reasonable for an automated blessing device. Otherwise the issued blessings might be unauthorized or even in violation of copyright.

                                              • dottjt a day ago

                                                Literally been watching through this series over the past week. Interesting to see it here.

                                                • 8bitchemistry 19 hours ago

                                                  Is there a metric version?

                                                  • card_zero a day ago

                                                    Now that he's got the manufacturing costs down this is edging toward being the surprise breakthrough device of the 2020s. Just needs marketing, I hear that Jonathan Ive fellow is in need of something meaningful to do these days.

                                                    • bookofjoe a day ago

                                                      Hmmm... what if this IS the AI device he and Altman are talking about but it leaked a year early? Asking for a friend.

                                                    • timwis a day ago

                                                      Haven’t heard of Fathers Ted, and I assumed by the title that this was an article about passphrases

                                                      • pansa2 a day ago

                                                        Yes, a Father Ted Kilnettle Shrine Tape Dispenser is an alternative to a Correct Horse Battery Staple

                                                        • bryanrasmussen a day ago

                                                          surely there is no alternative to my lovely correct horse battery staple?!

                                                      • Animats 2 days ago

                                                        Next, the paper towel and toilet paper meters.

                                                        • Malic a day ago

                                                          Now I want a rubber frog that croaks, “The Golden Age of Ballooning” (Monty Python reference)

                                                          • ndsipa_pomu a day ago

                                                            Careful now!

                                                            • puddingpop a day ago

                                                              Down with this sort of thing!

                                                            • faoioifdaoifds a day ago

                                                              [dead]

                                                              • narhdo 2 days ago

                                                                [dead]

                                                                • stavros a day ago

                                                                  I don't know if this is an HN thing (as in, the software disallows it), but that title needs some punctuation. My first thought was "Who's Ted Kilnettle and what's Shrine Tape"?

                                                                  • jerrysievert 21 hours ago

                                                                    at most it could use a "the" in front of the title:

                                                                    The Father Ted Kilnettle Shrine Tape Dispenser

                                                                    which is a reference to a show name Father Ted, in which a Kilnettle Shrine tape dispenser was sold as a souvenir at the Kilnettle Shrine, and brought on a plane by Father Ted in the show Father Ted.

                                                                    • stavros 12 hours ago

                                                                      Father Ted "Kilnettle Shrine" Tape Dispenser.