
Circuit Stickers - comex
http://www.crowdsupply.com/chibitronics/circuit-stickers
======
steven2012
What a great idea! I would immediately buy this, I just wish this were an
actual product instead of a crowdsourcing kickstarter-type campaign.

After my experience with Lockitron, I have no desire to lock away my money for
months while fretting over whether or not I'm going to get ripped off.

The same goes for the Heritage Chemistry set which I would buy for any of my
kids (but to be honest, mainly for myself), but I just don't have any faith
that I will see my $500-700.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Actually, in the circuit stickers case Bunnie is committed to shipping them
(did you see the funding goal was $1 ?) This was more of a marketing move than
a raise funds move.

~~~
steven2012
Lockitron is also committed to shipping their product, but I still have no
idea if I'm going to get it or not, or if it's going to be DOA on arrival.

~~~
icelancer
I'm almost ready to crow about Parallela as well. Waiting on my kit and the
future is bleak.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Interesting I thought both the Parallela and the Lockitron were shipping. I
see that Lockitron claims they will 'resume shipping' this month and
shop.adapteva.com allows orders but is 'out of stock' of the parallela. Such a
sad place to be.

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columbo
This is very cool!

I'm worried about the long term stickiness of the LEDs/Timers/ICs. If I was to
buy this I'd probably stick foil to the adhesive bottom of the components so
they can be rested on top of the copper tape. That or put a few pins on the
+/\- areas. That way you can tape the copper to cardboard instead of paper and
then punch the components through the tape.

~~~
csmuk
I'd worry more about the power carrying capacity of the proposed conductors
especially during partial failures. Someone is going to set fire to their
clothes one day and it isn't going to be pretty.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its low voltage. Seems unlikely.

~~~
csmuk
Stick some steel wool across a 9v battery and you'll get what I mean.

It's the current, not the voltage.

Video for you:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWuJokR_mI8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWuJokR_mI8)

~~~
bigiain
Yeah but - these are powered by CR2032s - typical capacity is around 200 milli
Amp Hours, and they're usually rated at a maximum continuous current of 1mA
with 10mA "pulse" capacity. That's a continuous 0.003W or pulses of 0.03W.

It's probably not _impossible_ to start a fire with a pair of CR2032s, but
you're going to have to set it up that way on purpose – the chance of
"accidentally" creating enough heat to set non-intensionally-incendiary
materials alight is low enough to be ignored.

(Note, I carry a pair of these cells around in my pocket - an LED light
attached to my keyring. These cheapo lights rely on the internal resistance in
the battery to current limit the LED, with a white LED across a pair of cells,
the battery's own resistance is enough to keep the current down under the "let
the smoke out" limit of the LED - it might be more than 20mA, but it can't be
heaps more.)

~~~
csmuk
They are powered by that here. The inevitable chain will be either the battery
will go flat in minutes or there will be brown outs which are inevitable if
you have LEDs and non MSP430 grade CPUs hanging off it. The result of this
will be inevitably, judging by usual projects I've seen, either stick a PP3 in
with a regulator or even worse chuck a cheap LiPoly on it.

Then you're in trouble/on fire.

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VLM
Interesting idea. Needs logic gates? I find the idea of a gate level ALU sew
into a sheet of fabric to be intriguing. "My bed quilt is a working 8x8
hardware binary multiplier".

A game of life automaton in the form of a bedquilt would be interesting.

These strange ideas would seem to be a logical extension of the basic product
concept.

~~~
gvb
While it isn't a raw gate level ALU, it has a ATTiny85 that you can program to
do your 8x8 (software) binary multiply.

~~~
VLM
I don't want to multiply numbers, I want the gate level circuit diagram,
preferentially each individual gate having an LED at its output. Then feed in
random binary numbers and watch the show.

Kind of like if I want to know what time it is, I'd look at my phone, but if I
want to look at something cool on my wall I'd look at:

[http://www.transistorclock.com/](http://www.transistorclock.com/)

I also find Clayton Boyer's clock designs appealing, although my electronics
skills exceed my wood butchering skills by many orders of magnitude:

[http://www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm](http://www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm)

So its a question of style or taste, as a work of art.

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joezydeco
I was a bit skeptical about the idea but seeing Bunnie's name on the project
is kind of a certificate of endorsement now.

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ErikRogneby
Not in time for Christmas but I'll still keep an eye on this one. I think this
is great for anyone who wants to get their 4 year old interested in
electronics, but isn't comfortable handing them a soldering iron. My girl
LOVES stickers.

~~~
csmuk
Seriously give it a few years. At 4, they'll eat the components when you're
not looking.

8 is a much better age to start electronics.

~~~
munificent
> At 4, they'll eat the components when you're not looking.

This is highly dependent on the kid. My experience is that some are "eaters"
and take a long time to outgrow it while others just never really get into the
mode of learning by mouth.

~~~
csmuk
I didn't think my eldest was an eater until a BNC sheath went AWOL off the
table when she was 5...

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porsupah
My initial concern was that the adhesive might be prone to wearing off after a
few reapplications. Their FAQ addressed that point, though not in the way I'd
hoped:

"Like normal stickers, they are designed to be stuck exactly once. Since the
adhesive takes some time to reach full strength, if you are careful, you can
peel the stickers off right away, but this causes the sticker to lose some of
its tack (which can make faulty connections in the circuit)."

Certainly, reapplicability would be a design challenge in itself - I can't
fault them for eliminating that concern. Still, it would've been fun to see.
Maybe a future version?

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mattholtom
As someone who used to play minecraft, this reminds me of redstone circuits
brought into the real world! Cool!

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Minecraft can definitely be a 'gateway drug' to real electrical engineering.

I wonder how tough it would be to anondize the copper red...

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pistle
$1 goal? Is this a project in need of funding or HN marketing ploy?

The product seems great. Not sure I see why it couldn't go on its own without
the hype machine.

~~~
badhairday
I think they're just using Crowd Supply as a way to set up a simple pre-order
system.

~~~
VLM
I've seen several preorder strategies in the recent electronics kit field.

The P112 project did a kickstarter. Mines sitting on the bench, too many other
things to work on. A very simple kit given what it does. I'm sad I had to wait
like 4 months for someone else to put the SMD components on, I could have done
that myself in less than an hour.

The N8VEM people sit on preorders until they get 20 at a time. Sometimes thats
a very short amount of time indeed like days, sometimes its a bit longer like
years between orders of certain obscure PCBs!

The SpareTimeGizmo people have done some ship off the shelf and some preorder,
I think? I was fast on the draw and got one of the last 6120 PDP-8 full kits
ever made some time in the 00s.

The KB9YIG SDR people were supply line limited at a very low price, so as they
put together sets of bargain price kits they put them up for sale and usually
sold out in an hour or at most a couple hours. To say this aggravated people
who missed the 45 minute sale window, every time, would be a profound
understatement. They switched to a much higher price and off the shelf
shipping a couple years ago. I miss paying $11 for a single band fixed freq
SDR although its annoying to pay $21 today for the same thing, its nice that
its always in stock rather than being something like a lotto.

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leetrout
Awesome to see this as a product!

The gang over at the graffiti research lab was painting circuits back in
'06ish.

[http://www.graffitiresearchlab.com/blog/projects/post-
circui...](http://www.graffitiresearchlab.com/blog/projects/post-circuit-
board/#video)

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pmorici
Wow, this is really cool I wish they had this kind of stuff when I was a kid.

~~~
csmuk
When I was a kid we had kits for entire computers, radios, modems, test gear
and stuff.

What happened to that?

Not impressed with flashing LEDs on string.

\----

Edit: Add a rant as people seem to miss my point:

Well all the kit companies disappeared as people learned to assemble prefab
stuff and purchase ready made consumer electronics made by the lowest bidder.

I'll probably get downvoted for this but...

My real problem is that people want a quick fix now rather than actually
learning something or constructing something of complexity. About all you get
now is someone plugging an LED into a prefab arduino and crudely hacking
together some prefab C functions and it's the next best thing since sliced
bread, requires a whole blog about it and much circle-jerking from the maker
crowd about how this is the next greatest flashing LED contraption.

Put a 555 or a couple of transistors, capacitors, resistors on the table for a
simple astable multivibrator and bricks will be shit. Even the basic maths for
working out which resistor has to be used in series with an LED to limit
current has to be canned in an iPhone app these days.

This is a cult of people assembling Ikea furniture, no more.

~~~
scarecrowbob
Hey, there is a project going on that is much like you'd like. I took my 12
year old through it, and it's a bit rough, but not bad for how cheap it is:

[http://www.pyroelectro.com/edu/digital/](http://www.pyroelectro.com/edu/digital/)

~~~
csmuk
That's closer to it although a little sparse by the looks. Possibly a very
short introductory course.

If asked, I tend to direct people towards the following books:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Electronics-Student-
Manual/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Electronics-Student-
Manual/dp/0521377099)

Note: you need both the student manual (which most people don't know exists)
and The Art Of Electronics.

To cover the maths background required, I recommend:

[http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan-
Gullberg...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan-
Gullberg/dp/039304002X)

They are not cheap but worth it.

Oh and a calculator. Any old cheap scientific (Casio/TI/HP) will do as long as
it doesn't make errors.

The big problem for me was the maths initially. It doesn't take long before
you hit a brick wall at the age of 12. My 10 year old daughter is learning
algebra and programming (in python!) though at school so things are looking
up.

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NKCSS
Very cool :) As long as they make enough cheap components, this could even be
sold as a kind of next-gen lego for kids to play with :)

~~~
AndyJ1972
I was thinking of combining the two, seeing as I have more Lego than is
healthy for a 41 year old. :-D

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andyl
This is great - I'm getting it.

