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An engineer's emergency kit business card
- ck2 13y agoHow exactly would you get through TSA with that... remember they almost shot and killed that MIT student that was wearing some circuits as art on her shirt
- afandian 13y agoThe author never expressed a wish to visit the US.
- Kliment 13y agoThe author applied to YC which sort of implies wanting to visit the US for a few months.
- amirmc 13y agoIf you can take a laptop through (or in fact any electronics) then in principle, this should be no problem.
- cenhyperion 13y agoThis is the TSA we're talking about.
- protomyth 13y agoThe laptop is on a list + the card is not on the list + it looks different = not on the list and different gets you in trouble
- micheljansen 13y agoEasier said than done. I have personally experienced what happens when flying with a nonstandard electronic device in your carry on and it's not an experience I would like to repeat. In my case, all I was carrying was a hardware prototype consisting of a standard Samsung touch panel + control module in a custom injection molded plastic enclosure. Basically a glorified iPad. This resulted in me being detained for over an hour while they ran every possible test on it, inspected every single item in my carry on and even photographing every individual page in my notebook. I was then followed until I got on the plane and even had to confirm that I was on the plane before it was cleared to depart. This was on a US domestic flight. I have flown with prototypes in Europe several times (international flights) and have never had any problems. Either way: bringing nonstandard electronics, even things that are much less sophisticated than acceptable things like laptops etc. can cause you major headaches when the TSA is involved.
- saalweachter 13y agoJust out of curiosity, how were you carrying it? I'm picturing it stuffed in your bag like most people carry an iPad. I'm wondering if you'd be better off carrying prototypes in a separate, custom piece of luggage, like a Pelican case. Something that says 'this is expensive and important', rather than 'someone made this in a garage'.
- micheljansen 13y agoSorry for the late response. I carried it in a small carry-on suit case, along with my other stuff, so not in a separate custom luggage. I did take it out and put it through the scanner separately though, as one would with a laptop. It looked fairly expensive and on its own though, as it was professionally made, but if I ever have to do this again, I'll try packing it separately :)
- majke 13y agoa) Citation needed. b) Aren't the TSA officers unarmed?
- sp332 13y agoCitation: https://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/09/mit_student_arr.html https://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/... It was Massachusetts state police who arrested her at gunpoint, and were completely unapologetic about freaking out and blamed the victim for being scary. Edit: yeah, the same police force who had just freaked out over LED advertisements earlier that same year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare
- timje1 13y agoWow that's appalling. Major Scott Pare of the State Police: "Again, this is a serious offense ... I’m shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport." Switch out 'wear' with 'carry' and we've got a future headline starring this device! Or indeed any device with exposed wires / circuits.
- ams6110 13y agoYou have to admit, it is a bit like walking into a lion's den with raw meat pinned to your shirt.
- crusso 13y agoAppalling that someone could be stupid enough to walk around with a flashing circuit board and carrying play-doh? It's about as bright as carrying a realistic-looking toy gun into an airport.
- sp332 13y agoBecause flashing circuit boards are so often used by terrorists?
- segmondy 13y agoyou don't have to carry on, you can still check in.
- laurenstill 13y agoI'm building the DIY cellphone specifically to see what sort of TSA pushback I receive. I've gone through with lockpicks, booze, arduinos, rpis, various components and boxes full of electronic bits. Only major issue I've encountered was accidentally packing items in a box that shipped reloading supplies.
- duiker101 13y agoWell done Saar, nice to seem someone from the Pitch & Mix on HN!
- EGreg 13y agoI just never understand how OCaml programmers love to party.
- leif 13y agoThey're functional alcoholics.
- rlpb 13y agoAt first I wondered why you needed all those parts just to light an LED. Then you explained what they were for. Nicely done.
- asb 13y agoFor those not familiar with Saar/Boldport's work, he's working on PCBmodE (https://bitbucket.org/boldport/pcbmode https://bitbucket.org/boldport/pcbmode, used to create this business card PCB), an open source layout tool borne out of frustration with the existing tools widely used by the industry. The most impressive board designed using PCBmodE so far in my opinion is Saar's 'lifegame' http://boldport.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-lifegame.html http://boldport.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-lifegame.html
- joelgrus 13y agoVery cool, although it seems like it might be simpler to just learn OCaml.
- ___1___ 13y agoI prefer Kevin Mitnicks: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ranh/106709219/ https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ranh/106709219/
- sutro 13y agoObligatory link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk
- jwr 13y agoI am impressed by the amount of work someone did to make this site completely unusable on iOS devices. It loads slowly, poorly animates (what for?), scrolls abysmally, and prevents zooming in. I'm sorry for the slightly off-topic comment, but I think this needs to be said. I long for clean, simple, readable web pages.
- boldport 13y agoI'm the author and maker of this board. The blog is hosted on blogger (Google). When I decided to use blogger I wrongly assumed that it will 'just work' across platforms, but it hasn't been the case, unfortunately. There isn't much I can do in terms of configuration, and the only option is to find a new blogging platform, which I may do in the future.
- mrtbld 13y agoI think it is because of the Blogger's "Dynamic Views" template your blog uses. Maybe another (more classic) template would be better for cross-device compatibility.
- boldport 13y agoI will test that, although I'd normally expect this brand name service's back-end to handle this stuff gracefully.
- deelowe 13y agoBlogger is a rather poorly supported product at Google. I'm sure it's on the chopping block soon as it duplicates a lot of G+ functionality.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago... and to be honest, this might not be such a bad thing. For simple articles, G+ is about a billion times better than blogger, and would make a pretty good replacement for many people. Indeed, ideally as part of such a move, they'd enhance G+ a bit[1] to cover the areas where it's currently weaker than blogger. Then everybody would win... [1] E.g. better support for formatting articles; curently it only supports a rather pathetic subset of markdown.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoNicely done, I wonder if you could add a 555 timer with the legs pulled straight out to the sides. Not sure you could clip it and still plug it in a socket but you could rewire it 'dead bug' style.
- boldport 13y agoThat's a thought. I'm interested in new mechanical configurations of components, and how to hide/embed them into the board in interesting new ways.
- pg 13y agoIs it the default now for individual entries on blogger.com blogs to be displayed as lightboxes, or is this just an unusual option this one user chose?
- thinkalone 13y agoIt displayed as the default "Microsoft Word" layout when I first viewed it (after enabling Javascript), but then, when I used the "back" keyboard shortcut to try and come back here, the page re-displayed in a lightbox. Fun.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoEvery blog there seems to do this by default, which means that Pocket, etc., can't read them.
- aaronbrethorst 13y agoJust try reading it on an iPad. It's an absolutely miserable experience. It feels like they tried to reimplement scrolling, which, of course, they get totally wrong. It baffles me that companies spend significant amounts of time and resources making a user experience that works great rather awful[1]. [1] See also: Flickr.
- MarkSweep 13y agoOddly they are continuing to make it worse. For at least a year you have needed JavaScript enabled to view Blogger sites. It's a blog, why do you need JavaScript to display a loading screen! And they scroll horribly in mobile Safari too. And now these light boxes. I don't get it. Related to the BoldPort product though, I think electrical engineering world is world could use some better tools. Earlier in the week one of our electrical engineers spent a day helping to debug a new board. The problem ended up being a signal name was renamed in one place but not another. If the current EE design tools don't have refactoring support much less some sort of electrical "uninitialized variable" error, there must be room for improvement in these tools.
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- droopybuns 13y agoThis is cool, but I like Michael Ossmann's better. http://ossmann.blogspot.com/2011/02/throwing-star-lan-tap.html http://ossmann.blogspot.com/2011/02/throwing-star-lan-tap.ht... PCB board for a LAN tap. Definitely one of the coolest business cards I've received- particularly at a hacker con.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoI think that the banana peel is a reference to this: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1qkd9x/secret_staircase_reveals_terrifying_secret/ http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1qkd9x/secret_staircase...
- adamnemecek 13y agoLove the banana for scale reference.
- memset 13y agoNext on my wishlist - a business-card-sized emergency soldering iron!
- solistice 13y agohttps://www.sparkfun.com/products/9450 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9450 it's not business card sized, but it'd probably fit in a pocket.
- jds375 13y agoWhat a cool idea. Hope he finds a way to make it scalable.