Inspired by QSL cards as a manifestation of invisible radio transmissions, I constructed this device, which listens to the radio and transcribes what it hears. 

The radio printer is composed of the guts of a portable radio, which feeds audio into a sonic visualizer screen and a Raspberry Pi. The Pi uses an on-device speech-to-text model to write words, which are typeset and immediately output by a thermal printer. The orange tuning knob invites the viewer to change the station, interrupting the flow of type. 

Incorporated into the typesetting system is a confidence metric — the worse the transcription becomes, the more the Pi injects random strings of unicode static, chopping up the words and upsetting the baseline. 

In laying bare the received messages, I saw an opportunity to extend this idea into the design of the object itself, and all components are visible in its final form.