7 ms·

How the Nvidia Ruler Measures Up

188 points by bcaulfield 9y ago

534b44a 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
  - masklinn 9y ago
    And of courses it uses actual nvidia parts which is convenient for nvidia engineers.
  - wanderingjew 9y ago
    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.
busterarm 9y ago
I want one of these so bad... :/
pppp 9y ago
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/
- davidkuhta 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing, I was wondering if others existed Also, lol, eevBlog: > A handy 7″ PCB ruler, don’t settle for an average 6 incher!
  - vvanders 9y ago
    Dave Jones is a riot, his videos are equally hilarious and informative. If you're interested at all in modern electronics I highly recommend giving them a watch.
    - cglace 9y ago
      I stumbled across his videos about a month ago and couldn't stop watching. Great stuff!
  - tzs 9y ago
    I saw some marketing material from a hard disk maker in the '80s that said something like 5 1/4 hard is better than 8 inches floppy. I wonder how many complaints HR would receive nowadays if some marketing person put that in a draft they circulated for review?
- rzzzt 9y ago
  AvE also has one: https://www.etsy.com/listing/464202928/one-rule-to-ruler-them-all-cheeky-jokes https://www.etsy.com/listing/464202928/one-rule-to-ruler-the...
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    Also has another variation https://www.etsy.com/listing/519921651/welders-ruler?ref=shop_home_feat_3 https://www.etsy.com/listing/519921651/welders-ruler?ref=sho...
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Pecker detector.
jquast 9y ago
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-pcbruler.jpg https://www.mouser.com/images/adi-engineering-discovery-pcbr... https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/pcb-ruler-12inch/57794?mpart=PCB-RULER-12INCH&vendor=8 https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/pcb-ruler-12inc...
- bluedino 9y ago
  People are always swiping the digikey ones from our engineers.
- joezydeco 9y ago
  DigiKey. Got a handful of them.
vjeux 9y ago
If you are hosted by an employee, they are available for sale to visitors. It's super awesome indeed and bought one.
contingencies 9y ago
In our office we taped the free Ikea roll-up fabric rulers to desks for quick measuring.
- laythea 9y ago
  I like your style :)
ALX9 9y ago
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.
rubatuga 9y ago
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
ChuckMcM 9y ago
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
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  Great April Fool's prank. ... Right?
- nayuki 9y ago
  > 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 9y ago
    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-and-rare-heres-how-you-can-get-one/ http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidias-geforce-gtx-usb-drive-is-real...
killjoywashere 9y ago
Is there an NVidia career fair in San Diego (UCSD? SDSU?). Huge ruler nerd (also, pencils, calculators, engineering paper, etc).
BuildTheRobots 9y ago
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-interactive-binary-ruler https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1897710270/digirule-the... [2] https://www.tindie.com/stores/bradsprojects/ https://www.tindie.com/stores/bradsprojects/
jrockway 9y ago
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.
52-6F-62 9y ago
One of their partners in Toronto handed me one of these at Big Data/AI Toronto this past spring. I like it a lot.
verall 9y ago
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.
sigi45 9y ago
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.

188 points by bcaulfield 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.
- masklinn 9y ago
  And of courses it uses actual nvidia parts which is convenient for nvidia engineers.
- wanderingjew 9y ago
  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.

busterarm 9y ago

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

pppp 9y ago

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/

davidkuhta 9y ago
Thanks for sharing, I was wondering if others existed Also, lol, eevBlog: > A handy 7″ PCB ruler, don’t settle for an average 6 incher!
- vvanders 9y ago
  Dave Jones is a riot, his videos are equally hilarious and informative. If you're interested at all in modern electronics I highly recommend giving them a watch.
  - cglace 9y ago
    I stumbled across his videos about a month ago and couldn't stop watching. Great stuff!
- tzs 9y ago
  I saw some marketing material from a hard disk maker in the '80s that said something like 5 1/4 hard is better than 8 inches floppy. I wonder how many complaints HR would receive nowadays if some marketing person put that in a draft they circulated for review?
rzzzt 9y ago
AvE also has one: https://www.etsy.com/listing/464202928/one-rule-to-ruler-them-all-cheeky-jokes https://www.etsy.com/listing/464202928/one-rule-to-ruler-the...
- dawnerd 9y ago
  Also has another variation https://www.etsy.com/listing/519921651/welders-ruler?ref=shop_home_feat_3 https://www.etsy.com/listing/519921651/welders-ruler?ref=sho...
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Pecker detector.

jquast 9y ago

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-pcbruler.jpg https://www.mouser.com/images/adi-engineering-discovery-pcbr... https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/pcb-ruler-12inch/57794?mpart=PCB-RULER-12INCH&vendor=8 https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/pcb-ruler-12inc...

bluedino 9y ago
People are always swiping the digikey ones from our engineers.
joezydeco 9y ago
DigiKey. Got a handful of them.

vjeux 9y ago

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

contingencies 9y ago

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

laythea 9y ago
I like your style :)

ALX9 9y ago

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.

rubatuga 9y ago

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

ChuckMcM 9y ago

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

CamperBob2 9y ago
Great April Fool's prank. ... Right?
nayuki 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  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-and-rare-heres-how-you-can-get-one/ http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidias-geforce-gtx-usb-drive-is-real...

killjoywashere 9y ago

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

BuildTheRobots 9y ago

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-interactive-binary-ruler https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1897710270/digirule-the... [2] https://www.tindie.com/stores/bradsprojects/ https://www.tindie.com/stores/bradsprojects/

jrockway 9y ago

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.

52-6F-62 9y ago

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

verall 9y ago

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.

sigi45 9y ago

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.