London Underground Radio

I’ll be perfectly honest – I haven’t listened to broadcast radio in a number of years. Between iTunes, Pandora, and SiriusXM, I have enough choices already. That said, I would actually listen to the radio again if I could have one that looked like this.

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Created by sound artist/designer Yuri Suzuki, the Tube Map Radio is a printed circuit board designed in the image of London’s underground subway map. But instead of just telling you how to get from the Tower Bridge to King’s Cross, it actually works as a radio.

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Certain locations on the map form a radio circuit, and assuming you place all the resistors, capacitors, and other electronics in the right places, it will form a functional radio.

Unfortunately, I don’t think you can buy the radio at this point, but I think Yuri should consider making a series of these for different cities and selling them in kit form.

[via MoCo LoCo]

AgIC DIY Kit Lets You Print Circuit Boards on Ink Printers: Agical!

Last year we talked about the EX¹, a 3D printer designed to print circuit boards on a variety of materials, including paper. The EX¹ has great potential, but if all you want is to print is circuit boards on paper, the AgIC may be better for you. It’s a DIY kit that lets you convert ink printers to make them print circuit boards instead.

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AgIC’s main component is a silver nanoparticle ink that’s very similar to conductive paint. You’ll have to manually inject the ink into an ink cartridge, but if you’re constantly making circuit boards that added task will be worth it. You’ll also need their special coated paper, and some conductive glue or tape to apply your parts to the board.

Printer makers must be seeing dollar signs right now. Pledge at least $299 (USD) on Kickstarter to get an AgIC DIY kit. Pledge at least $599 and you’ll get a ready-to-use AgIC modded printer.

[via PSFK]

Engineer’s Emergency Business Card Will Do in a Pinch

This isn’t the first circuit board business card we’ve seen, but this one is more useful than others. Its maker, Saar Drimer calls it the Engineer’s Emergency Business Card. He makes a living from making circuit boards, so this was probably a piece of cake for him.

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You can’t plug it into your computer, or even open a beer with it, like other cards we’ve seen. But not only does Saar’s card light up when current is applied to it, it’s cleverly designed so its two resistors, LED, NPN MOSFET, capacitor, and even a little extra bit of solder can be easily removed for emergency use.

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When all hope is lost, the MacGyver engineer could snap out one of the components and save the day. Recall the countless times you desperately needed a 1 KOhm resistor to fix an amplifier at a party, only to see the girl you were trying to impress slip away with an OCaml programmer? Never again with this little kit. You even have 2 cm of solder in there to make sure the connection’s electrically solid!

How brilliant is this?

[via Hack A Day]

Dragons Made from Circuit Boards (aka Motherboard of Dragons)

I may be a nerd, but it just seems like circuit boards make everything better. They are all shiny and full of circuits. And when you make dragons from old circuit boards, they look pretty amazing. They probably breathe electricity rather than fire.
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These cool dragons were made by Amanda aka TheblueKraken. Each dragon has been made into brooches, necklaces or business card holders that have gleaming (artificial) opals for eyes. She handcuts each circuit board, removes all of the extraneous elements, and then polishes and seals them in clear coat before assembling them with rivets.

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I love how she used different circuit boards for the wings, adding some depth. And check out this design – it’s a red dragon necklace, made from a less common red circuit board and hesonite garnets.

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These and other cool designs are available over at TheBlueKraken’s ArtFire shop.

I pity the knight who goes up against these dragons. Electricity and armor don’t mix.

[via Obvious Winner]

EX¹ 3D Prints Circuit Boards: Rapidest Prototyping

Last year we found out about a new material that could be used with 3D printers to make simple electronic sensors. If that tinkled the tinkerer in you, wait ’til you see the EX¹ 3D printer. Made by a group of young geniuses calling themselves Cartesian Co., EX¹ prints circuit boards, and does so on a variety of materials.

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EX¹ prints a circuit board using two chemicals that react to leave silver nano particles on a surface. Cartesian Co. claims they have successfully used this process to print circuits on a variety of materials, including “plastic (many types), glass, wood, ceramic, silicone and even fabric and paper.” They’re also working on a coating that can make any surface compatible with the EX¹.

Pledge at least $1,499 (USD) on Kickstarter to get an EX¹ printer  – plus cartridges and substrates to print on – as a reward.

[via Gigaom]

Executive Decision Maker Pro Kit: for Wishy-washy Makers

Here’s a fun project that can be scaled depending on your skill level with electronics. Like the Magic 8-ball, the Executive Decision Maker Pro lets you outsource your fate to a gadget, which is just as clueless as you are but is at least more decisive.

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Press the Decide button and the EDM Pro will flash either Yes or No for four seconds; press the Reset button to clear the answer right away if you need to answer another question. You can also hold the Reset button and keep pressing the Decide button for rapid fire answers.

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If you took one look at the EDM Pro and you already know pretty much how it works, then all you need to do is to get the design files from Vagrearg’s website. But if you need a bit of help, you should get Vagrearg’s ready to assemble EDM Pro kit for $57.50 (USD). The kit has all the parts you need but has an unassembled circuit board. If you’re a beginner, you should pay extra for the LED mounting guide and the assembled board.  If you’re a Physics nut, get this EDM instead.

[via Hack A Day]

Light Up Circuit Board Art: eLEDtronic

Programmer and avid gamer Saar Drimer aka boldport wanted to make a special wedding gift for his friend Mike, who’s also a gamer and a computer scientist. Not only did he succeed in making a great gift with his own hands, the tool he used to design the gift was also his creation. Saar made a wall-mountable PCB that’s accented by 42 RGB LEDs behind it.

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Saar calls this piece lifegame. To design the board, Saar used PCBmodE, a PCB design tool that he wrote. Saar made the program to make it easy to create PCBs that are functional, artistic and of varied shapes and sizes.

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He used an ATtiny85 microcontroller to handle the LEDs. As a finishing touch, he installed an arcade button as a tittle and a missile launch switch to toggle the power.

It started out as a personal project, but Saar said that his lifegame has also won at a design competition and shown at a museum. Head to his blog for more on how he made lifegame.

[via Hack A Day]

littleBits Modular Magnetic Electronics Kits: No Solder, No Problem

A few months ago I talked about a Kickstarter project called the LightUp, an electronics kit for kids and newbies. Instead of wires or solder, LightUp uses magnets to connect the modules together. It turns out that there’s already a very similar product out on the market. It’s called littleBits, and it already has a growing number of modules and a healthy community.

littlebits modular magnetic electronics kit

Like LightUp, littleBits uses color-coded modules that easily snap together using magnets. Each module also has screen-printed labels that identify its parts. Unlike LightUp, littleBits uses the polarity of magnets to prevent you from sticking a module to another module the wrong way.

The modules are separated into four types: power, input, output and wire. The first three are self-explanatory, while the wire module is used to extend or branch out your circuit. Each type has multiple variants. For instance, there’s a USB and a coin battery power module, a button and a light sensor input module, an LED and a DC motor output module and more.

Head to littleBits’ online shop to order a kit. The base kit costs $99 (USD) and comes with 10 modules. You can also buy more modules separately.

Check out the littleBits website and their YouTube channel to see what customers have built with the kits.

[via Make:]

TRON Kevin Flynn PCB Portrait: Fatherboard

The intriguing appearance of printed circuit boards or PCBs have inspired works of art. But Taylor John Brooks figured out a way to make art out of PCBs themselves. What better way to show off his craft than with a portrait of the man who got into the digital frontier?

tron flynn lives printed circuit board art by taylor john brooks

If that image caused an uprising in your pants, order the Flynn Lives circuit board from Taylor’s Etsy shop for just $15 (USD). Taylor also plans to make PCB illustrations of lightcycles and recognizers down the road.

[via DudeIWantThat]

Postcard Music Player Plays Printed Circuits Printed on Paper

We have accessed music in many different ways. It’s the 21st century after all. And now UK-based communications agency Uniform has devised a new way to access music. With their interactive Postcard Player.

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These music playing postcard prototypes are printed with electronics using conductive inks. These allow users to interact with the flat printed circuit. The postcards can be docked into the Postcard Player to play music. You can control music by touching the paper postcards in the same way you would a touchscreen. Each card has tracks with printed buttons to pause and remix the music. Though it appears that the music itself is stored in the docking station, and the printed circuit only serves to identify which track to play and to control playback.

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The Postcard Player is being shown off at Design Museum’s 2013 Designs of the Year show through July 7th, where it is showing everyone what you can do by printing electronic circuits onto unconventional surfaces. Pretty cool. Imagine getting a postcard, then docking it to hear a voice message and a song. Sure, it’s a novelty, but an interesting one.

[DigitalArts via TAXI via Damn Geeky]