Receipt printer + barcode scanner interface (with Joy-Con support for optional two-handed operation) for loom. Presented at qr show in March 2025.
2024
In the summer of 2024, my partner Shanni suggested we purchase a receipt printer with the explicit intention of tangibly visualizing Loom trees on receipt paper.
I realized that loom could ostensibly power a prototype of an interactive "paper loom" with just a few modifications. We ordered and received our first thermal printer shortly thereafter; I spent a week or two adding rudimentary ESC/POS support, and we gave a series of informal demonstrations to a number of pairs -> groups of friends (and friends of friends) over the following weeks and months.
Early feedback
I found my laptop + terminal to be rather heavily distracting to users, quickly & continuously hijacking attention from the receipts themselves, let alone the material printed on the receipts.
The less visual contact between a user and my computer, the smoother their experience seemed to go, regardless of technical inclination.
We observed that a user who engaged with the receipts directly (minimized eye-screen, maximized hand-paper contact) was more likely to find intrigue in the heart of the project: base models + Loom. A couple of users noted that their previously wholly-negative impression of AI broadly had been swayed by their experience.
What I took from this was that my responsibility as a facilitator was -> the goal of this interface should be to meet the user on level ground, to foster a tacit/intuitive understanding of the various mechanics in a way that was informed by whatever shared overlap we had in terms of background or interests, be they technical or cultural (music, writing, videogames, etc).
Cards, sheets
I found myself at a certain point in this process fascinated by the idea of a paper-only "card-based" mechanism for operating the loom. My early attendance @ Side Project Saturday was largely oriented toward building out something to that effect:
I made solid progress, but hit a wall (that is, quickly and reliably scanning multiple QR codes with a single faraway camera under varied lighting conditions) and paused work on the receipt side of my loom for a good while.
2025
Barcode scanner
I resolved one night in March 2025 to finish the first iteration of a paper-only receipt loom; my intention was to give the multi-QR scanning hurdle another earnest attempt in light of new model releases, etc.
Thinking the next morning about what I'd seen of Omar & Andrés' Folk Gadget, I realized that scanning multiple QR codes simultaneously (Folk-style) was a problem that didn't necessarily need solving for this system to exist.
I'd previously toyed with a webapp to scan codes with a mounted or handheld smartphone, but foregone the idea in large part due to its dissonance with the intention behind the project (screenless computing / LLM interaction), along with performance concerns.
By comparison, barcode scanners have been heavily optimized for speed, accuracy, and ergonomics:
Demos
The rest of the prototype came together pretty smoothly over the course of a couple of weeks.
We presented the project at qr show, held @ Recurse Center in March.
We also brought the receipt loom to Sydney, Australia.
This is where things stand as of July 2025:
