
How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up - bcaulfield
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2017/12/22/nvidia-ruler/
======
pppp
Adafruit makes a nice ruler for a reasonable price:

[https://www.adafruit.com/product/1554](https://www.adafruit.com/product/1554)

as did eevBlog:

[https://www.eevblog.com/projects/uruler/](https://www.eevblog.com/projects/uruler/)

~~~
rzzzt
AvE also has one: [https://www.etsy.com/listing/464202928/one-rule-to-ruler-
the...](https://www.etsy.com/listing/464202928/one-rule-to-ruler-them-all-
cheeky-jokes)

~~~
nugi
I immediately thought of this one. Perhaps more useful to the 99% of us who
dont work with SMD. I am sure the 'detector' would provide amusement to a few
people.

~~~
tesseract
I'm pretty sure more than 1% of electrical engineers have worked with SMD -
they're tough to avoid these days, unless you are strictly doing
microelectronics, or a power engineer bolting things together with bus bars.

~~~
mkl
We are not all electrical engineers.

~~~
CamperBob2
You won't even be a hobbyist for much longer, unless you make your peace with
SMD.

Relax. It's fun. Assimilate.

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jquast
We have something similar these all over the office, they come free w/large
orders from digikey and mouser I think

[https://www.mouser.com/images/adi-engineering-discovery-
pcbr...](https://www.mouser.com/images/adi-engineering-discovery-pcbruler.jpg)

[https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/pcb-
ruler-12inc...](https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/pcb-
ruler-12inch/57794?mpart=PCB-RULER-12INCH&vendor=8)

~~~
bluedino
People are always swiping the digikey ones from our engineers.

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ChuckMcM
I like them, although the GFX USB drive[1] is even neater (in my opinion).
That said I've got a minor collection of PCB rulers, one from Adafruit that
they just threw in with my order one time, one from Digikey from Makerfaire,
one from Digilent, and one from nVidia. One that I would like to get is the
one that does various things[2] (its an active circuit), and I mocked up one
with an e-paper 'edge' where you could set what ever scale you wanted but the
cost of a custom e-paper display was going to be $35K NRE! And then the
displays themselves were about $50 each in relatively small quantities.

[1] [https://www.geforce.com/gtx-g-assist](https://www.geforce.com/gtx-g-
assist) \-- and no it doesn't really play your games it is just a nice USB 3.0
flash drive :-)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2p3EYFlwCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2p3EYFlwCU)

~~~
nayuki
> [https://www.geforce.com/gtx-g-assist](https://www.geforce.com/gtx-g-assist)

Mozilla Firefox: Content Encoding Error. The page you are trying to view
cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

Google Chrome: This site can’t be reached. ERR_CONTENT_DECODING_FAILED.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Hah, I guess the traffic borked it. Here was some coverage from PC Gamer on
it: [http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidias-geforce-gtx-usb-drive-is-
real...](http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidias-geforce-gtx-usb-drive-is-real-and-
rare-heres-how-you-can-get-one/)

------
BuildTheRobots
I got a couple of DigiRule's [0] from their kickstarter [1] a few years ago
which was kinda fun. It has interactive logic gates, flip flops, a 4 bit
counter and a handful of different modes.

On the back you get some truth tables and some common pads and size holes.
Selling for $11 [2]

[0] [https://www.bradsprojects.com/the-
digirule/](https://www.bradsprojects.com/the-digirule/)

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1897710270/digirule-
the...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1897710270/digirule-the-
interactive-binary-ruler)

[2]
[https://www.tindie.com/stores/bradsprojects/](https://www.tindie.com/stores/bradsprojects/)

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ALX9
These rulers are pretty popular as goodies Nvidia hands out at career fairs
(along with socks). I see these every semester at the CMU job fair.

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verall
They're popular enough they go out of stock in the employee store pretty
often; I had to wait a month to get one for buddy.

It's pretty neat even if it basically just sits on my desk. I think I've used
it more times as a square edge than as a ruler.

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jrockway
Digikey sent me a similar ruler for free without me even asking. Everyone and
their mother has or makes one of these.

If this is the most coveted item in their employee store, they must not have
anything good in their store.

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contingencies
In our office we taped the free Ikea roll-up fabric rulers to desks for quick
measuring.

~~~
laythea
I like your style :)

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534b44a
Cheap PCB rulers can be found on ebay. I had one bought for my professor as a
bribery/flattery present when I was at the university.

~~~
Cixelyn
The Nvidia one looks quite a bit nicer than your average eBay ruler though...
full 12", two color silkscreen, ENIG finish, and some crazy tiny-pitch BGA
footprints. The component layout is also not haphazard like most of the other
rulers I've seen; it's much more of a work of art.

I definitely want one.

~~~
wanderingjew
I assure you, that is not a two-color silkscreen. The green NVIDIA 'eye' logo
is much more likely a second manufacturing process (confusingly also a
silkscreen or pad printing process) that was done after the boards were
received from the fab, or drop-shipped to a screenprinting company.

I would be very, very surprised if the green eye logo was done in-house at the
fab.

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killjoywashere
Is there an NVidia career fair in San Diego (UCSD? SDSU?). Huge ruler nerd
(also, pencils, calculators, engineering paper, etc).

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rubatuga
I received this ruler from a career fair this year. It's very well built, and
I hang it up on the wall in front of my desk

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vjeux
If you are hosted by an employee, they are available for sale to visitors.
It's super awesome indeed and bought one.

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sigi45
Now i want one. Didn't care 5 minutes ago when i didn't knew about it...

And while others posted similar ruler, they don't look as nice as the nvidia
one.

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52-6F-62
One of their partners in Toronto handed me one of these at Big Data/AI Toronto
this past spring. I like it a lot.

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busterarm
I want one of these so bad... :/

