Proposals for weddings are just one of the many minefields you have to look through on social media. Ivan Miranda is even making things a lot more difficult.

He has worked on and built an automated printer that can draw messages in the sand.

So, it’s probably a good time to prepare yourself for a continuous dose of “will you be my spouse” beach proposals filling up your timelines.

Miranda’s printer makes use of techniques copped from the dot-matrix printers which were the trademark for home publishing in the early 80s and 90s.

To use these printers, a huge printer head moves backwards and forward between groups of large wheels which slowly move their printer in totality across the beach.

When the print head rolls, an embedding tool moves down and goes up to draw lines in the sand – which eventually create longer messages.

It is a very slow process, mostly for those people who have become used to ultrasonic speed laserjet printers which produce lots of pages per minute.

However, the results are more Instagram-related than for you to try writing an endearing note in the sand with a stick.