Live data from Hacker News

How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

blogs.nvidia.com

21–30 of 42 posts

Re: How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

#22
post #4
post #2

Cheap PCB rulers can be found on ebay. I had one bought for my professor as a bribery/flattery present when I was at the university.

The Nvidia one looks quite a bit nicer than your average eBay ruler though... full 12", two color silkscreen, ENIG finish, and some crazy tiny-pitch BGA footprints. The component layout is also not haphazard like most of the other rulers I've seen; it's much more of a work of art. I definitely want one.

I assure you, that is not a two-color silkscreen. The green NVIDIA 'eye' logo is much more likely a second manufacturing process (confusingly also a silkscreen or pad printing process) that was done after the boards were received from the fab, or drop-shipped to a screenprinting company.

I would be very, very surprised if the green eye logo was done in-house at the fab.

Re: How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

#23
I like them, although the GFX USB drive[1] is even neater (in my opinion). That said I've got a minor collection of PCB rulers, one from Adafruit that they just threw in with my order one time, one from Digikey from Makerfaire, one from Digilent, and one from nVidia. One that I would like to get is the one that does various things[2] (its an active circuit), and I mocked up one with an e-paper 'edge' where you could set what ever scale you wanted but the cost of a custom e-paper display was going to be $35K NRE! And then the displays themselves were about $50 each in relatively small quantities.

[1] https://www.geforce.com/gtx-g-assist -- and no it doesn't really play your games it is just a nice USB 3.0 flash drive :-)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2p3EYFlwCU

Re: How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

#24
post #19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AvE also has one: https://www.etsy.com/listing/464202928/one-rule-to-ruler-the...

I immediately thought of this one. Perhaps more useful to the 99% of us who dont work with SMD. I am sure the 'detector' would provide amusement to a few people.

I'm pretty sure more than 1% of electrical engineers have worked with SMD - they're tough to avoid these days, unless you are strictly doing microelectronics, or a power engineer bolting things together with bus bars.

Re: How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

#26
I got a couple of DigiRule's [0] from their kickstarter [1] a few years ago which was kinda fun. It has interactive logic gates, flip flops, a 4 bit counter and a handful of different modes.

On the back you get some truth tables and some common pads and size holes. Selling for $11 [2]

[0] https://www.bradsprojects.com/the-digirule/

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1897710270/digirule-the...

[2] https://www.tindie.com/stores/bradsprojects/

Re: How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

#27
post #5

Adafruit makes a nice ruler for a reasonable price: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1554 as did eevBlog: https://www.eevblog.com/projects/uruler/

Thanks for sharing, I was wondering if others existed Also, lol, eevBlog: > A handy 7″ PCB ruler, don’t settle for an average 6 incher!

I saw some marketing material from a hard disk maker in the '80s that said something like 5 1/4 hard is better than 8 inches floppy.

I wonder how many complaints HR would receive nowadays if some marketing person put that in a draft they circulated for review?

Re: How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

#28
Digikey sent me a similar ruler for free without me even asking. Everyone and their mother has or makes one of these.

If this is the most coveted item in their employee store, they must not have anything good in their store.

Re: How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

#29
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I immediately thought of this one. Perhaps more useful to the 99% of us who dont work with SMD. I am sure the 'detector' would provide amusement to a few people.

I'm pretty sure more than 1% of electrical engineers have worked with SMD - they're tough to avoid these days, unless you are strictly doing microelectronics, or a power engineer bolting things together with bus bars.

We are not all electrical engineers.

Re: How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

#30
post #19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AvE also has one: https://www.etsy.com/listing/464202928/one-rule-to-ruler-the...

I immediately thought of this one. Perhaps more useful to the 99% of us who dont work with SMD. I am sure the 'detector' would provide amusement to a few people.

Im finding SMD easier than through hole. Reflow the board and your soldering is done in one step.

And PCB production is so cheap and fast now.

Post reply on HN