Is That A Rom In Your Locket?

[Andrew] recently ordered some lockets to bejewel them with some LEDs but got a bonus small locket for free with the order. Not really having a plan for the small locket it kind of sat around until finally some inspiration hit. Meet the ee-locket which contains a tiny circular pcb with a 64k eeprom, a few passive support components and a male pin header on the back so you can quickly plug it into the micro of your choice.

While the uses of such a thing may not be obvious at first, just sitting down writing this I thought of a few applications, such as some form of key and lock system, mission impossible dreams, or just going full out geek at your next job interview. Its a pretty spiffy idea no matter what its used for, and we just love it when people shove electronics where no one expect them.

30 thoughts on “Is That A Rom In Your Locket?

  1. yes, it looks really steamish. maybe reversed steampunk’d. Instead of adding useless shiny metal to working hightech, we see the adding of practically useless shiny hightech to shiny metal jewelery.

  2. I wonder how hard it would be to put a small micro in there, and a small color LCD. So when you open it the picture of your loved one pops up. Kinda like those tiny photo key chains.
    I may just have a project…..

  3. I’m sorry if I’m missing something, but what does it do, other than store data in an EEPROM? Why not stick a micro-SD card inside the locket, something that many devices that can make use of?

  4. Yup, I’d go with the RFID version too. At least it would be usable in some vaguely magic-looking sort of way to open stuff. There might be problems with the medallion shielding the antenna though…

  5. I thought about that, and I even tried. But mifare antenna just didn’t work (I think I even know where the bug was) and soldering aluminium (I salvage mifare ultralight chips from metro tickets) is kind of tiresome.
    Maybe some time later. So let it be eeprom this time.

  6. @Dacap,
    I re-use surface mount stuff all the time. You just have to be careful when removing it.

    In fact, I can’t think of anything I re-used, that didn’t work, because I was too rough when removing it. Electronics parts are not the fragile little beasties lots of people think they are. Most are pretty sturdy.

  7. Considering that you can’t protect this EEPROM, using it for any type of security would be, well, not secure at all.

    Also, this SOIC package is way too big – Why not use something smaller?

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