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PCBs arrived from PCBWay

A project log for A Very Annoying Business Card

Solar powered business card designed to attract attention on a regular basis.

dead-rat-productionsDead Rat Productions 06/04/2024 at 15:400 Comments

After a bit of friendly haggling over the number of business cards to be produced, Liam from PCBWay agreed to fully sponsor this project with some lovely gold ENIG plated pads, solder pasting stencil and perfectly reproduced artwork and email address font. I was worried about the font, but it seems most people have Verdana somewhere on their computer systems. It would be pretty bad if the address was in system font or some over strange offering.

All of the circuits have already been tested so it should be just a case of placing the components and throwing into the reflow oven. A few changes to the design had to be made including getting rid of the ESP32 C3 board as it seemed to be a fake and replacing it with a fully branded and trusted Seeed Studio Xiao ESP32C3 Tiny MCU, which worked fine.

One noticeable choice in the design is the battery holder. It's an expensive component, but in my mind very worthwhile. The worst thing I could do is fly all the way to the Bahamas to visit the prospective billionaire project investor with a business card that has a loose battery. With this battery holder, you literally have to prize the battery out with a screwdriver - it will never accidentally fall out or come loose!

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