July 2015: a new version of the rpi2caster has been assembled at the Enkidu-Pers in Holland, in close cooperation with the young computer-genius Krzysztof Słychań of the BookArt Museum in Lodz, Poland.
This interface uses four Italian-made matrix-valves, a RaspberryPi mini-computer with a specially designed board mounted on it. The whole is mounted in a metal box. It can be mounted on a Monotype caster within a few minutes, and also taken off, without any change or other addition to the historical machine.
Two of these computer interfaces have been installed: one on the machine of the Enkidu-Pers, the other on the large composition caster of Han Boordman of the Heavy Metal Press (Motomania) in Den Andel Holland.
The interface will be demonstrated at the forthcoming AEPM conference at the Tipoteca italiana in Cornuda, Italy.
More details and pictures can be found at the monotype-chat forum-pages of Metal Type.
With this much more affordable interface we hope to revive Monotype casters all over Europe and elsewhere. The software will be open-source. At this very moment however, the sofware is still in full developpement.
As has been proved at the Book Art Museum, a machine in full action, casting a computer-controlled text in composition, attracts a lot more attention compared with machines lying idle in the corners of silent exhibitions.
