On the way to the mailbox, you might be expecting bills, birthday cards, perhaps a grocery store catalogue or two. [Steve] was like you, once – until an embedded computer showed up in the junk mail.
The mailer turned out to be from the Arconic corporation – some sort of publication trying to sway a board of directors vote one way or the other. But far more interesting is the hardware inside. The device consisted of a 3″ LCD screen within folded cardboard, some buttons and a micro USB port. After the device let the smoke out when [Steve] attempted to charge it, the next step was naturally to perform a full teardown.
It was a simple job to identify the chips inside which still had their factory markings, and [Steve] found that it appeared to share its design with an Audi marketing material from 2014. It’s rather amazing that such technology is cheap enough for this sort of mass mailout, though [Steve] notes that it’s rather an imprudent move to post out a “fire hazard that needs to be specially recycled”.
This reminds us of the e-paper Esquire magazine display from a few years back.
