from Hacker News

Father Ted Kilnettle Shrine Tape Dispenser

by indiantinker on 6/1/25, 5:31 AM with 63 comments

• by austinallegro on 6/1/25, 6:51 AM

  (My lovely, lovely, lovely horse)

  My lovely horse (My lovely horse) Running through the field (Running through the field) Where are you going, with your fetlocks blowing in the wind? (All Summer)

  I want to shower you with sugar lumps And ride you over fences Polish your hooves every single day And bring you to the horse dentist

  (My lovely, lovely, lovely horse)

  My lovely horse, (My lovely horse) You're a pony no more (You're a pony no more) Running around with a man on your back Like a train in the night... like a train in the night (I Love You Anyway) My lovely, lovely, lovely horse

• by FionnMc on 6/1/25, 8:23 AM

  I genuinely never thought I'd see Father Ted, let alone the lourdes tape dispenser on the front page of HN. What a great day.

• by theamk on 6/2/25, 3:25 AM

  One of the hardest things in Arduino-based designs is power savings, and this one is not an exception.

  This design has no power saving, which means it will only last few hours tops on the batteries. This could be improved, but the current design (ESP8266 + analog IR sensor) does not really work with low power.

  A good start would be to put a 2nd low-power micro on IR encoder that'd (1) count pulses (2) wake up ESP8266. This will allow one to keep complex stuff (audio out) using Arduino libraries, while small piece of hand-written code will take care low power stuff.

  A more advanced design would be to get rid of ESP8266 and switch to low power MCU. If you keep audio uncompressed, a small MCU (STM8 or AVR8) is perfectly capable of playing some speech... and it will only take microamps in sleep/sense mode. You likely won't be able to use as many pre-made libraries however, so this is substantially more development time.

• by nabla9 on 6/1/25, 7:57 AM

  Talk about Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.

  Just a week ago I became aware of Father Ted and watched only the show with the tape dispenser because it was recommended to me by Youtube. This article is year old, and shows up now in my feed.

• by vgeek on 6/1/25, 2:44 PM

  This seems to be an ecumenical matter.

• by userbinator on 6/1/25, 8:06 PM

  The logic runs on an ESP8266 microcontroller instead of a Raspberry Pi Zero, all of which means the electronics inside can be purchased for less than €10.

  This looks like the type of application which, if mass-produced, would have the electronics done on a $0.10 mask-programmed COB.

• by zeristor on 6/1/25, 6:38 AM

  They could do a Mrs Doyle on that:

  “Go on, go on, go on, go on, goes on”

  Or that gives you a coup of tea instead

• by vmilner on 6/1/25, 5:07 PM

  Did Father Ted have much impact in the US? - it always seems v British/Irish in its humour (but that’s true of Monty Python of course and that obviously made it over there)

• by anonzzzies on 6/1/25, 11:14 AM

  Father, what's it all about?

• by scottlamb on 6/1/25, 5:03 PM

  Neat project!

  > Instead of a rotary encoder to measure the tape rotation, it now uses an IR led and sensor.

  I don't get it; how does this work? Are there openings at certain positions in the reel that it detects the light through? Why is this better than the rotary encoder design?

• by theoreticalmal on 6/1/25, 11:17 AM

  Feck off!

• by tempodox on 6/1/25, 8:56 AM

  I didn't know sticky tape usage is a blessable act. TIL!

• by dottjt on 6/1/25, 10:52 AM

  Literally been watching through this series over the past week. Interesting to see it here.

• by 8bitchemistry on 6/2/25, 1:52 AM

  Is there a metric version?

• by 10yearsalurker on 6/2/25, 9:11 AM

  Shoddy shoddy shoddy

• by card_zero on 6/1/25, 9:58 AM

  Now that he's got the manufacturing costs down this is edging toward being the surprise breakthrough device of the 2020s. Just needs marketing, I hear that Jonathan Ive fellow is in need of something meaningful to do these days.

• by timwis on 6/1/25, 9:05 AM

  Haven’t heard of Fathers Ted, and I assumed by the title that this was an article about passphrases

• by Animats on 6/1/25, 7:39 AM

  Next, the paper towel and toilet paper meters.

• by Malic on 6/1/25, 2:41 PM

  Now I want a rubber frog that croaks, “The Golden Age of Ballooning” (Monty Python reference)

• by ndsipa_pomu on 6/1/25, 1:57 PM

  Careful now!

• by stavros on 6/1/25, 10:22 AM

  I don't know if this is an HN thing (as in, the software disallows it), but that title needs some punctuation. My first thought was "Who's Ted Kilnettle and what's Shrine Tape"?