[jmwilson]

(2022)

The first time I saw a PCB business card, I thought it was pretty cool. Then I saw a PCBA business card (with components!) and was amazed. But now I just see them as unnecessary e-waste for vanity. Business cards get read, scanned, and tossed. At least the impact of a piece of paper and ink is small compared to fiberglass resin, copper foil, ENIG, and solder mask. This example isn't even that great as a business card: the typography and contrast make the contact information poorly legible compared to the component silkscreen. Amazing PCB art (https://grandideastudio.com/portfolio/projects/the-worlds-th... is the best I've seen) makes creative use of the different contrast, translucency, and textures between exposed and masked copper, masked and unmasked bare FR4, and silkscreen layers. It's a very constrained graphic design problem that takes a good eye.

[therealcamino]

Guy: "I wrote a MIPS R3000 emulator from scratch, ran it on a microcontroller on a board I designed myself, and emulated a late-80s DEC workstation well enough to run not just Linux, but also DEC's own proprietary closed-source Unix on it (although I had to patch the Ultrix kernel's machine code, without source code or even symbols in the exec, to fix a bug). For fun."

Internet: "Pssh. Not pretty enough. Next!"

[StevePerkins]

You have to mention "e-waste" in order to establish that you are virtuous, not just a killjoy.

Note, however, that this does not work in threads about the Vision Pro goggles that people will chuck in the bottom of their closets (next to their Oculus and Google Glass) once the novelty wears off.

[nullwarp]

This site has some of the worst attitudes towards anything that's not just the same old apple garbage.

Bring something thats genuinely unique or something that really encompasses the spirit of what a hacker was when I was growing up you just get garbage responses like the parent.

[fnordpiglet]

The PCB business card is about 0.5% of what’s interesting about this. The artistry is what the business card is running, and that’s also the remaining 99.5% of the links content.

[rvense]

Many people make electronics as a hobby. It's probably a fairly high-impact hobby compared to knitting or reading, but I'd credit the author for at least thinking of a use case for their little microcontroller board. I also imagine they soldered all of the PCBs they got, instead of buying five, populating two, and leaving both in a drawer after bring-up which is so normal now that PCBs are so cheap.

[soco]

Fact is I never take (or give) business cards. A "what's your name - is this you in LinkedIn?" is more than enough for me. We could chat about your fancy card but I'm definitely not planning to carry any around, from or to home.

[JohnFen]

> A "what's your name - is this you in LinkedIn?" is more than enough for me.

What about all those people who don't use LinkedIn?

[soco]

I haven't met any techie so far not being in LI. Otherwise for the occasional driver or plumber I'd just get their number on the spot (if not already having it from their site). Worked fine for me for decades.

[JohnFen]

I deleted my LinkedIn account years ago, and I know a bunch of other devs who have done the same, or have just abandoned theirs and never use it anymore.

I'm not asserting that non-LI tech people are more than a minority, but there seem to be quite a few of them.

[neilv]

You could think of it as a résumé card. You show it to someone who needs someone who can do things like that, and (if they are clueful) they try interest you in their hiring opportunity (not try to neg you with Leetcode nonsense).

[yjftsjthsd-h]

The impact of one of these is greater than a paper card, but in turn pales before basically any other electronic device; given that they're made in absolutely tiny quantities, I struggle to imagine that it matters.

[dmitrygr]

I’ve gotten some very interesting offers from conversations started by handing one of these to someone.

[stevekemp]

I believe that, completely. Your projects are always a joy to read - your hardware is great, your emulation is great, but the way you document them is outstanding.

I think if somebody was talking to you, and saw your site, you'd get great offers regardless of the physical sample though.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Oh, I was only speaking of waste / environmental impact; I would expect that as business cards they're far more effective than paper.

[apapapa]

PCBA is just an assembled PCB?

[unwind]

It means "printed circuit board assembly" so yes.

[apapapa]

So I guess he was first talking about a PCB with zero components that is dead weight... Not sure why it would be "pretty cool" seeing the thickness and that it serves no purpose.

> The first time I saw a PCB business card, I thought it was pretty cool. Then I saw a PCBA business card (with components!) and was amazed.