

Printoo: Paper-Thin, Flexible Arduino-Compatible modules - rahij
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1030661323/printoo-paper-thin-flexible-arduinotm-compatible-m

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dperfect
I love the idea of FPCs, but I have a hard time understanding the practical
applications.

Even the Wikipedia entry[1] seems to list examples, most of which don't
entirely rely on the flexibility of the device. I can understand the need for
space savings, but that seems to be achievable for most of these applications
without the flexible component.

For most wearables I've seen (clothing or devices worn directly on the body),
FPCs don't seem to solve anything - you still have some bulky components, and
the truly flexible parts need to be handled with extra care so as not to
damage connections. I mean, clothing with built-in fitness monitoring (or GPS
or whatever) sounds cool, but current implementations really seem to miss the
practicality ("how am I supposed to wash this again?") of truly "invisible"
technology.

Can someone point me to some better practical applications?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_electronics#Applicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_electronics#Applications)

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mcamara
Printed electronics companies are currently working in fields ranging from:
smart credit cards (with auth codes for instance), medical patches,
interactive packaging (in the Harry Pottery sense but also for sensing),
interactive playing cards, children's books and board games (also Harry
Pottery), smart labels for logistics purposes, stickers, control panels in
automobiles and other circumstances where you may have a non-flat surface.

There's a lot of interesting work being done on the flexible board
technologies themselves. AgIc and others are supplying the tools for personal
fabrications of flex circuits. It's way cheaper today to prototype using
inkjet printed copper on PET than normal PCBs.

Finally, there is a little distinction between traditional FPC technology,
where discrete components are placed on a kapton-based film, and printed
electronics technologies, the idea of producing electronics components ranging
from transistors, batteries, displays, memory, antennas or sensors. Printoo
uses a hybrid approach since Printed Electronics are not yet mature enough to
provide the full solution.

Sorry for the lengthy reply!

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userbinator
_This technology was unavailable to the public - until now!_

FPCs have been around for _many_ decades:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_electronics#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_electronics#History)

I'm somewhat surprised that they didn't go for bare die versions of ICs like
the MCU, since COF is another quite-established technology for cheap flexible
electronics.

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mcamara
You're very right, we should clarify. The technologies not previously
available to the public refer to the printed electronics components:
electrochromic displays, printed carbon-zinc batteries, LED die chips on film,
printed polymer solar cells and printed light sensors.

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wiradikusuma
What can you do with it that you can't with Arduino?

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mcamara
We think printed electronics allows for three key features in new products: \-
Freedom in design. It used to be that electronics was about designing square
rigid boards to put inside square rigid boards. That doesn't have to be the
case anymore. \- Low-power applications. Printed components tend to be very
low power (electrochromic displays) or to provide that little bit of power
while still being flexible and printed (printed OPV, printed batteries); \-
Cost feasibility in high volume. These technologies, taking advantage of
printing processes already available in the printing industry, can reach price
points feasible for a lot of applications where traditional electronics are
not.

Lets say you have an idea to make intelligent boarding passes for airports.
With Printoo, you can make a prototype using electrochromic displays to tell
you how long you have before boarding and/or how far away you are from your
gate. You can have printed batteries powering the system. You can have
Bluetooth for positioning and synch with the servers. It's not going to look
exactly like a boarding pass, but it'll be a much closer approximation than
would be possible with any other proto board and it will use technologies that
would make sense for that. You would most likely be able to make and code a
mock intelligent boarding pass, looking reasonably good, in under an hour.

At a second stage then you could design a custom board integrating these
technologies and have concept prototype that would be much closer to a true
boarding pass. We want to also help people have access to the right tools for
this stage.

We thought that the current existing prototyping kits didn't offer the right
form-factors to prototype product concepts for things like smart wearables and
the high-volume internet of things (where intelligence is added to stickers,
labels, packages, and so on).

Sorry for the long reply!

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lcusack
I know this is a basic question. But how exactly does Printoo work with
Arduino? Do I need to buy anything from Arduino in order to use Printoo?

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JL2010
What they're saying is that their underlying hardware has been selected such
that it can be used with the Arduino programming environment to target it as
if it were a regular Arduino. So it is compatible with Arduino software and
tools.

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cauterize
Very impressive. But why is the pledge goal so low?

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hardwaresofton
I think they want to blow past it -- the Micro team set their pledge goal at
$50k, and ended up raising something like 2 million (last I checked).

Their costs might also be particularly low, given that they are printing &
laminating the circuits, and (clearly) already have the tech required to do
that in place.

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mcamara
I'm part of the team behind this project. Your guess is very much on the money
on both counts - we can't deny we'd love to blow past it, and the fab process
for many of the components is already set up.

One other factor is that our company, and our partners in this project, really
want to get these technologies out in the open for people to use and play
around with. There is a lot of innovation happening with Printed Electronics
but unfortunately it has mainly been kept within R&D labs and B2B. Developing
this project was an investment we were willing to make mostly internally.

Thank you so much for the enthusiasm!

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cauterize
Your comment has persuaded me to donate. (first Kickstarter donation too!)

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mcamara
Thank you so much!

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hardwaresofton
Wow, this is awesome. This technology looks like it's poised to make it to
consumer grade much faster than anyone imagined

