As Niklas Roy puts it, “Currently, times are weird.” It’s hard to argue with his sentiment and in order to add a bit more positivity to the world, or at least the area near his Berlin workshop, he created an interactive pen plotter for his window. 

The idea is that while he didn’t know exactly what to say, Roy’s project — aptly named “Please Leave a Message” — allows passersby to create their own uplifting comments for other pedestrians to see over WiFi. 

The device repurposes the mechanical bits of an old but solidly built Aritma Colorgraf plotter, which is now controlled by an Arduino Mega and new driver hardware. People log into the installation’s simply web server through a separate ESP8266 module, which sends text to be printed to the Mega via a serial connection. There’s even an RTC that notes the precise time and date of when each message was written. 

More details can be found on Roy’s website!