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Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

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171–180 of 234 posts

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#171

If you are curious what PCB designs or schematics look like, you can use an online viewer for KiCad files to find out yourself: https://kicanvas.org/?github=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FNich... @creator of the card (phirks?): have you considered further interactivity or maybe using the LED matrix for showing text or other information? You could use touch buttons for control as they basically add nothing to the BOM? Edi…

I was thinking of throwing in a game like Tetris with just accelerometer controls. That'll be after I find a job though. Numbers were actually the first things I displayed, I actually still have all the code to display them still sitting unused.

Text has been less of a success. Having the letters be easily legible takes more space than I would have thought, and the small pixel fonts don't look great with the big spacing between the LEDs. Maybe some scrolling text would look good, but I haven't focused on it too much. I tried getting a QR code displayed, but it didn't want to scan.

For buttons, I'm kind of married to the idea of no buttons. The accelerometer does recognize clicks and double clicks in different directions, so that might be useful for something.

I encourage anyone who wants to fork/contribute/post issues on this to do so and I'll try to be a good maintainer.

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#173

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.

If you ask for it to be handed back, it's not a business card. It's a toy.

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#174
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you wouldn’t give em to just anybody, but anybody who gets one is guaranteed to remember you! I’d probably even keep it in my desk to play with. After a few weeks I’d accidentally have this guy’s email/linkedin memorized for eternity

I'm just imagining interviewing a candidate for a job involving embedded systems and this dude pulls this out at the end and says "If you have any other questions, my email's right on there." What an absolute baller this guy is.

Still has to respond "no" on the post interview scorecard because the given solution didn't use the optimal ObscureLeetCodeAlgorithm

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#175
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…

One thing that helped me was doing some tutorials for pico-8, an intentionally 'weak' game platform, one of which is a platform game with a simple / understandable inertia / gravity simulation (jumping, running left/right; think Mario). It was understandable enough with an x / y position for the character and a delta-x / delta-y representing their current speed. Every frame the dx / dy would get changed depending on…

Gravity is constant acceleration (in most games). Your algorithm is broken.

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#177
post #171

If you are curious what PCB designs or schematics look like, you can use an online viewer for KiCad files to find out yourself: https://kicanvas.org/?github=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FNich... @creator of the card (phirks?): have you considered further interactivity or maybe using the LED matrix for showing text or other information? You could use touch buttons for control as they basically add nothing to the BOM? Edi…

I was thinking of throwing in a game like Tetris with just accelerometer controls. That'll be after I find a job though. Numbers were actually the first things I displayed, I actually still have all the code to display them still sitting unused. Text has been less of a success. Having the letters be easily legible takes more space than I would have thought, and the small pixel fonts don't look great with the big spac…

Thanks for the detailed reply. I actually like the idea of using the accelerometer as input device and the design choice of using no buttons.

What’s the update rate of the LED matrix if I may ask? Maybe the combination of an accelerometer and the LEDs lends itself to a persistence of vision display?

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#178
post #171

If you are curious what PCB designs or schematics look like, you can use an online viewer for KiCad files to find out yourself: https://kicanvas.org/?github=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FNich... @creator of the card (phirks?): have you considered further interactivity or maybe using the LED matrix for showing text or other information? You could use touch buttons for control as they basically add nothing to the BOM? Edi…

I was thinking of throwing in a game like Tetris with just accelerometer controls. That'll be after I find a job though. Numbers were actually the first things I displayed, I actually still have all the code to display them still sitting unused. Text has been less of a success. Having the letters be easily legible takes more space than I would have thought, and the small pixel fonts don't look great with the big spac…

> That'll be after I find a job though.

I can't imagine you'll be on the job market for long (and I certainly hope not).

This is such an amazing looking for work ad, I'd imagine you'll get snapped right up.

Major kudos on this. It's amazing!

Re: Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

#179
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a cr2032 shorting it is not dangerous, it can’t supply the current to get hot enough do any real damage.

It says rechargeable, maybe a CR2032 size but prob lithium chemistry. Even a small size could create quite a hazard if shorted.

Yep, the rechargeables of this form factor are also pretty safe. They just don’t have much current capacity, as they are meant for long life (years) and long current draw.
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