Ever wanted to print something from your phone, but
didn't have a printer around? No? Well,
somebody out there probably has at some point, and
this is just the invention for whomever
that person might be.
It's a smart phone case with a printer built in, that
prints onto normal paper. It
has an inkjet in
the middle of the face, and motorized ball bearings
on each corner so it can crawl around the
page.
When you set the phone on the paper, it uses the
phone's camera (in conjunction with a macro
lens built into the case) to locate a corner of the
page and orient itself. If the user hasn't
specified the paper size, it then travels along the
edge of the page until it locates the opposite
corner. Having determined the paper format, it
begins at the top left corner of the page and
prints the document row by row as it moves back and
forth down the page.
The paper detection settings can be disabled in
order to simply print freeform, of course. And
since the motorized bearings are also capable of
sensing motion, you can even print in the
vertical orientation (such as on a wall or on the side
of a box) by manually moving the phone
across the surface. In this configuration, the camera
can be used to detect previously printed
lines to aid the software in orienting the output for
multi-line printing.