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Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

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Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#21
post #16
post #6

Would love to see more information about how it was built. He must have worked with a company that can do the surface mount assembly?

Electronics can be surprisingly easy and cheap to build these days. He designed the circuit and layout with software called KiCAD (free and open source) then submitted the designs to a fabrication house - probably a popular offshore one - that easily can handle that level of board and component placement complexity. It would probably cost only a few hundred to build and ship, with 1 month turnaround time. You can als…

There's also some homebrew pick-and-place machines and soldering ovens, but that's probably a bigger upfront investment than the offshore companies can offer.

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#22

Very nice, but probably a bit too expensive to just hand out. I knew a chap that had a similar hardware business card (I don't remember exactly what it did, but it wasn't as cool as this one). I remember that his card was pretty scuffed up, and he insisted I give it back, after he handed it to me. Bit weird.

[flagged]

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#23

Instead of a business card, I'd love an ultrathin pleasure card you can refill with virtual beer and virtually drink! You could input your weight, and it could track you BAC! I made "PalmJoint", a beamable Palm pleasure card for CodeCon 2002, when everybody was beaming their contacts around by IR at conferences, I would beam an interactive doobie simulator a bunch of people could play together in a circle. Each perso…

I love it; I bought a secondhand Palm just before smartphones became a thing for cheap and had a lot of fun with it. I wonder if I still have it somewhere and whether it still works, I haven't seen it in ages though so probably not.

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#24

Very nice, but probably a bit too expensive to just hand out. I knew a chap that had a similar hardware business card (I don't remember exactly what it did, but it wasn't as cool as this one). I remember that his card was pretty scuffed up, and he insisted I give it back, after he handed it to me. Bit weird.

I half expected this to have a button/mode to show custom QR codes...

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#25
post #14

Instead of a business card, I'd love an ultrathin pleasure card you can refill with virtual beer and virtually drink! You could input your weight, and it could track you BAC! I made "PalmJoint", a beamable Palm pleasure card for CodeCon 2002, when everybody was beaming their contacts around by IR at conferences, I would beam an interactive doobie simulator a bunch of people could play together in a circle. Each perso…

small ad-hoc networks like that with IR and early bluetooth were a lot of fun.

For beaming a lit joint around, you would definitely need an acknowledgement that it was safely passed, lest it drop on the floor! But how would you prevent duplication if several people received the same joint? I'd just mark that bug "Intended Feature: Will Not Fix."

The Bluetooth Bong was a vast improvement over the MIDI Bong.

MIDI aftertouch on the carburetor was a nice improvement over your grandfather's old Serial Acoustic 300 Baud ASCII Bong, but the Bluetooth Bong HID has a much higher bandwidth, multitouch chording, accelerometer tilt tracking, modular monophonic splash resistant microphone, and they weren't as easy to accidentally knock over because they were wireless. An extremely important feature if you have cats around.

But nothing beats a high-end spill-proof Rooᴙ 802.11be NVB (Network Video Bong) with fully submersible IPX8 smoke resistant stereo mics.

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#26
post #13
post #6

Would love to see more information about how it was built. He must have worked with a company that can do the surface mount assembly?

You can get boards like these made for single-digit dollars per unit* even at prototype scale, through companies like jlcpcb. *I haven't looked at the specific parts for this board, the LEDs look nice and could be a little pricey.

Boards, but can you get the pick and place and the soldering done? I wouldn't want to be soldering that many LEDs by hand!

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#27
post #4

Off topic, but where should one start learning writing physical simulation? Several years ago I ran into this project [0] and got overwhelmed even the algorithm can be written in 88 lines of C++. I realized that out of all CS topics, physical simulation is probably the one I knew the less (not saying I'm a compiler/database expert or something, but at least I've implemented a toy compiler and some basic data structur…

For statistical mechanics, I really liked [1]. Comes with loads of python programs.

To see what might peak you interest, the videos in [2] could be a good starting point.

[1]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/statistical-mechanics

[2]: https://matthias-research.github.io/pages/tenMinutePhysics/i...

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#28
If you like this, you'll also love Mitxela's fluid simulation pendant [0], and likely all of his work! I'm consistently astounded by how informative and enjoyable his stuff his. He shares so much, so freely and it's so well produced, with a lovely voice to boot. Inspirational! Watch his vids, read his write-ups or both! We need more people like this.

[0] https://mitxela.com/projects/fluid-pendant

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#29

If you like this, you'll also love Mitxela's fluid simulation pendant [0], and likely all of his work! I'm consistently astounded by how informative and enjoyable his stuff his. He shares so much, so freely and it's so well produced, with a lovely voice to boot. Inspirational! Watch his vids, read his write-ups or both! We need more people like this. [0] https://mitxela.com/projects/fluid-pendant

That was very clearly mentioned and linked in the article, too.

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#30
post #26
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get boards like these made for single-digit dollars per unit* even at prototype scale, through companies like jlcpcb. *I haven't looked at the specific parts for this board, the LEDs look nice and could be a little pricey.

Boards, but can you get the pick and place and the soldering done? I wouldn't want to be soldering that many LEDs by hand!

Every major chinese PCB supplier has offered very affordable PCB assembly ("PCBA") for several years now where you give the gerbers for the boards along with a BOM with part numbers from a mutual supplier catalog and p'np / solderpaste mask data and they will load up a p'np machine and oven run a small batch of boards for you.

e.g.:

https://jlcpcb.com/smt-assembly

https://www.pcbway.com/pcb-assembly.html

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