@MrChips It wouldn't necessarily have to be any part of the line, I was imagining it would be a designated point so that the phrase could be constructed by the circuit. The message itself is just a string of alphanumeric characters. I really can't give the exact message, but it's effectively gibberish.

@LesJones Unfortunately, even though that would be the easiest solution, the circuit producing the phrase would be the point!

Thanks for helping me through this.

 

@MrChips It wouldn't necessarily have to be any part of the line, I was imagining it would be a designated point so that the phrase could be constructed by the circuit. The message itself is just a string of alphanumeric characters. I really can't give the exact message, but it's effectively gibberish.

@LesJones Unfortunately, even though that would be the easiest solution, the circuit producing the phrase would be the point!

Thanks for helping me through this.

Well so far, your thread is mostly gibberish to me.
Give us a real example of what the message would say.
We have no idea where you are going with this until you be more specific.

So far, your problem is not about electronics design. Your problem is in poor communication. You still have not communicated what you are trying to do.

 

Are these characters all part of the standard ASCII character set ? If so each character could be defined a 7 bit code. The best way I can think of to represent characters in a physical form would be a diode matrix of between 1 and 7 diodes to represent each character. Touching a wire to the common point of each diode group would give an output that would display that character on the display. I am assuming the display is a single character display as your description is still not very clear.

Les.

How is touching a wire to ONE point on such a circuit going to provide the information to display a character? The signal would need to be time multiplexed and the reading circuit would need some way of synchronizing to it.

 

This might help clear things up as far as the intent is concerned.

Let's say that, somehow, you succeed in having a drawing such that, when you touch the designated spot with the probe from your display device the result is that "Eat at Joe's" appears on the display.

Do you want it so that you could then construct a different drawing such that, when the probe from this same display device is touched on the designated spot on the second drawing, the result is that "Shop at Sue's" appears on the display?

 

I was just trying to confirm that the descision was only that one fixed message had to be displayed or not displayed. Even if this was the case two connections would be required unless the conductive trace on the drawing was driven with a high frequency signal. I think I even failed to get an answer from the TS that clarified what was required. (Unless he just wanted to use some electronics to drive an LED or LCD display that was either blank or displayed a fixed message.)

Les.

 

I was just trying to confirm that the descision was only that one fixed message had to be displayed or not displayed. Even if this was the case two connections would be required unless the conductive trace on the drawing was driven with a high frequency signal. I think I even failed to get an answer from the TS that clarified what was required. (Unless he just wanted to use some electronics to drive an LED or LCD display that was either blank or displayed a fixed message.)

Les.

I'm trying to get at that same kind of clarification. I've left the single-point connection issue off the table for now, but it's certainly going to have to be addressed in due time.

 

So, the circuit I'm going to build is pretty simple as far as I can tell --

That was the TS's opening statement and yet no one here on AAC knows what the TS is trying to do.

 

That was the TS's opening statement and yet no one here on AAC knows what the TS is trying to do.

That's not too uncommon or surprising. Someone outside of a field often has extremely unrealistic view of how easy or how hard things are within that field -- and it does go both directions. They often think that some things must be extremely difficult when, in fact, they are trivial bread-and-butter stuff while at the same time thinking that something else must be really simple when, in fact, they might be a famous unsolved problem.

The trick -- as we've seen so often on the boards here and as most of us have seen in the real world over and over -- is in establishing a common vocabulary that let's both sides understand the other.

 

Here you go. Just point your phone cam at it and read.

 

You can't just "draw" a circuit without having components on it and expect it to do something useful.
A circuit is like a bunch of roads, with the electricity been busses. Without things like traffic lights, bus stops, bus routes and timetables all you have is a heap of busses moving around, not doing much at all.

If you wanted to have bit of "art" output a string, you will need to have some form of memory device (like a buss stop). You will also need a way of taking to you other device (like a bus route).

Have a look at rfid tags, or even better, look up qr codes like the example by philba.

I am, however, intrigued at what you are doing. Can you just tell is what you are trying to achieve without telling us how you want to achieve it?
Like this -
"I want to walk up to a painting, and if I touch it with a magic box, I want the name of the painting to be shown on the magic box".

 

I think you should draw a block diagram with wiring to show you want to do and describe the functions as a list one by one, and then it will be more clear to understand what you want to do, and our helpers have the common target to thinking about what's inside the block and solve it one by one.

 

Do you think you can draw a circuit with conductive ink on a piece of paper and it will do something?

Let me be clear:

With no power source.
With no electronic components.
Just a picture drawn with conductive ink?

Because that is what you have been saying, as far as I can tell.

Bob

 

Here is my interpretation of what the TS wants, again, reading between the lines.

He wants the actual message to be transmitted through the wire, not for practical, but "conceptual" purposes.

A single conductive trace could be energized with RS-232 serial data, the receiving end would be a UART input, interfaced to a text display.
Touching the wire allows this literal data stream to pass on to the display.

 

Here is my interpretation of what the TS wants, again, reading between the lines.

He wants the actual message to be transmitted through the wire, not for practical, but "conceptual" purposes.

A single conductive trace could be energized with RS-232 serial data, the receiving end would be a UART input, interfaced to a text display.
Touching the wire allows this literal data stream to pass on to the display.

This makes less sence then the OP...
Are you saying we want MAGIC RS232 BOX -> conductive painting -> DISPLAY BOX? In that case, sure, you can replace a wire with a conductive strip drawn onto a bit of paper. (ignoring the return path for now...)

Thinking about this more (forget about how hard this would be), could you have the painting act as an antenna? I guess this would satisfy the OP's requirement.