Flexible PCB Contest Round Up

The 2019 Hackaday Prize, which was announced last week, is very much on everyone’s mind, so much so that we’ve already gotten a great response with a lot of really promising early entries. As much as we love that, the Prize isn’t the only show in town, and we’d be remiss to not call attention to our other ongoing contest: The Flexible PCB Contest.

The idea of the Flexible PCB Contest is simple: design something that needs a flexible PCB. That’s it. Whether it’s a wearable, a sensor, or a mechanism that needs to transmit power and control between two or more moving elements, if a flexible PCB solves a problem, we want to know about it.

We’ve teamed up with Digi-Key for this contest, and 60 winners will receive free fabrication of three copies of their flexible PCB design, manufactured through the expertise of OSH Park. And here’s the beauty part: all you need is an idea! No prototype is necessary. Just come up with an idea and let us know about it. Maybe you have a full schematic, or just a simple Fritzing project. Heck, even a block diagram will do. Whatever your idea is for a flexible PCB project, we want to see it.

To get the creative juices going, here’s a look at a few of the current entries

The Flexible PCB Contest goes through May 29, so you’ve got plenty of time to get an idea together.

19 thoughts on “Flexible PCB Contest Round Up

      1. Self correction: I meant wallpaper instead of tapestry, but brainfarted and accidentally swapped them around.
        Although a huge flex pcb with addressable LED’s would most likely be used for light tapestry anyway, so I guess I unintentionally came up with an idea.

          1. Not currently cheaper per LED than standard strips, and also not as flexible in layout. Strips are available in almost any length (and several pixel densities), but the matrices come only in a few LxW combinations. And, you’d surely want to address the entire array by row or column rather than some convoluted collection of little rectangles.

            A wall covered by strips of some reasonable density (i.e., not video resolution), topped by some sort of diffuser, and driven by FadeCandy boards for smooth transitions would make an awesome (but very expensive) mood lamp.

          2. So, find an interesting adaptation for the AliExpress LED matrix and enter it in the contest.
            (maybe wrapping it around something, or inside something e.g. infinity table, cut to fit..)

  1. I need a flex PCB to adapt a replacement mSATA SSD into my palmtop Vaio in place of the old and glacially slow Toshiba SSD.
    It needs a SATA to PATA converter chip too. (The existing flex pcb has the now defunct ZIF/LIF connection for the existing SSD).

    I don’t think a simple adapter pcb is really competition worthy though…

      1. I use it in the data center when I need to walk around with a PC, it’s super easy to use instead of lugging a full laptop around.
        Also really convenient to use on the trains in Tokyo when it get’s packed full of commuters.

        If they made a modern version with a more powerful CPU, lots more RAM and a multi-touch display, I’d buy it in a heartbeat, but alas, the tablet market has killed off the ultra portable palmtop PC’s rater thoroughly. :(

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