My PCB business card
Yes, I am a geek. Having sold Whisher in early 2009, there was not much point in using my business cards from back then, as some of the info was not even valid anymore – this is what they looked like (front and back side-by-side):
I kept a few in case I needed to confuse someone, but for the most part, I needed a new design. As the MWC loomed in the horizon, I was mulling over a design for a personal business card, when I saw this video:
The guy is probably taking things over the top, but he is right on many grounds. Looking through the stack of business cards I built up during the Whisher years, it was hard to find one that was memorable or at least stood out from the crowd – notable mentions being Om Malik’s perforated card, or WeeWorld’s cards which are tiny. Another worthy contestant is Woz’s business card, made with laser-cut and perforated sheet metal:
or Kevin Mitnick’s, also cut on sheet metal, and this time including a handy set of lockpicks!
Searching for other ideas, I found this creativebits post on cool business card designs, plus a few more on this compilation by Neil Patel on his quicksprout.com blog. Finally, while spinning around in my chair throwing ideas around, I noticed my DEFCON 14 badge hanging next to my desk. This was a very cool design that included a Microchip PIC10F202 8-bit microcontroller, two large blue LEDs, and software that drove them in different patterns by pressing a button. Mixing this with another design I found at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, which was a bit too bulky to carry around in quantities, I came up with the final idea.
Card specs
In essence, my new business/visit card would need to meet a set of basic requirements:
- Use a thin, one-side printed circuit board (PCB). Silver plating on black or blue mask.
- Show contact information – email, phone, URL, and so on.
- Include the simple LED driver circuit from the DEFCON badge, thus mixing hardware and software into the card.
- Be about as thin as a normal card (without populating the circuit of course).
- Include a personal motto.
- Be updatable from the web (uh?).
Use a PCB
After a quick call to a local PCB manufacturer I had worked with in the past, I decided to go for 0.6mm thick one-side copper board. There would be no holes, and just round-cut corners. The exposed copper would then be silver-plated, and finished with a black mask. While it is true that silver plating goes dark with time due to oxydation, and more quickly so in the presence of finger oil, this would be easy to prevent with a think layer of Tropicoat.
Contact information
This part was easy. On the PCB design I would add my name, title, email, phone and blog URL. I used Klavika as the font, which even though looked like crap in the Gerber viewer, came out really smooth and true to the font’s shape.
Circuit design
Following the guidelines on Grand Idea Studio’s site, I designed the circuit and PCB layout, with a few small changes such as 0603-size LEDs instead of the huge ones used in the DEFCON badge. It uses a Microchip PIC10F202, which is an amazing flash-based 8-bit microcontroller, holding 750 bytes of program code, and 24 bytes of RAM. You may think this is limited, but the PIC has a SOT-23 6-pin footprint, which is tiny. It also features an internal 4MHz oscillator, sufficient for most purposes. Programming it to flash LEDs at random intervals is an easy task, and one it handles well as it can sink 25mA on each input pin. The whole shebang runs on a CR2302 3-volt button battery.
Personal motto
For this I used the motto I have on this new personal blog, “aut viam inveniam aut faciam“. It is attributed to Hannibal, when faced with the crossing of the Alps on elephants, and being told by his generals that it was impossible. The phrase means “I shall either find a way or make one”. I feel it shows a spirit of drive and resolve, found in entrepreneurs and firefighters alike (of which I am both).
Be updatable from the web
Now this was a deliberate attempt at confusing you. How can one update the content of a business card online? It’s printed hardcopy, this one in particular, on silver-plated copper. Am I referring to the firmware on the PIC? Nope. The idea is simple – add a QR code to the card, which points to a URL used to show my latest updates, such as personal information changes and so on. By scanning the QR code, people can always find me, even if the rest of the information on the card has changed.
The end result
After a few hours fiddling with the design, Gerber files and other tidbits, the final design was born. This is how the board layout looked – note the jagged edges due to the Gerber viewer’s poor font rendering:
Two days later, the finished PCBs were ready, and this is how they looked:
Once populated with electronics:
And a close-up of the PIC circuit:
Sadly, the manufacturer was a bit too aggressive on the etching, which caused a ton of copper track breaks, rendering the circuits unusable. I’m in the process of getting replacements.
So, what do you think – cool or not?
