A curious custom that survives from the pre-computer era is that of the business card. If you walk the halls at a trade event you’ll come a way with a stack of these, each bearing the contact details of someone you’ve encountered, and each in a world of social media and online contact destined to languish in some dusty corner of your desk. In the 21st century, when electronic contacts harvested by a mobile phone have the sticking power, how can a piece of card with its roots in a bygone era hope to compete?
It’s a question [Anthony Kouttron] has addressed in the design of his thoroughly modern business card, and along the way he’s treated us to an interesting narrative on how to make the card both useful beyond mere contact details as well as delivering that electronic contact. The resulting card has an array of rulers and footprints as an electronic designer’s aid, as well as an NFC antenna and chip that lights an LED and delivers his website address when scanned. There are some small compromises such as PCB pads under the NFC antenna, but as he explains in the video below, they aren’t enough to stop it working. He’s put his work in a GitHub repository, should you wish to do something similar.
There’s a rich vein of business card projects on these pages, but so far surprisingly few are NFC equipped. That didn’t stop someone from making an NFC-enabled card with user interaction though.
Wait.. This guy must be a woodworker, it’s the only reason he’d have a centimeter ruler, rather than a millimeter one..
:)
Hm??? There are 10mm in a cm and that’s what he uses on the top front…
Thanks Anthony, You’ve put a lot of thought into this card and it’s uses! Awesome!
Jealous!
(ahem!)
[Anthony Kouttron] could you send me one of your cards? It would come in handy should I need to contact you.
B^)
Oh great, 2 hours after I post, and not seeing it, I post a reply to [Anthony] and then it shows up!
Thanks Josh for the kind words :D. I’m really glad you liked it!
Yeah, uh…
I think I need one of your business cards, you know in case I need to contact you someday.
Yeah, that’s it,
B^)
(Great work, I’m jealous. did you post any Gerbers for others to use?
Hahaha. Thanks Ren! I’m glad you liked my business card! Both the Kicad files and the gerber files are included in the github repo here:
https://github.com/anthonykouttron/pcb-business-card-qr-nfc
And on my website here:
https://salvagedcircuitry.com/pcb-business-card
Feel free to change it up as much as you like!
Really thorough write up! Excellent work!