Really loved the look of your website... Is it designed by you?

Author here. It&#x27;s a really good conversation starter. I&#x27;ve given a couple of them out and the reaction is always that I bought it somewhere, and I have to explain that no, I really did the entire design from start to finish!

I am astonished just reading this, what have been some reactions handing these out?

I don&#x27;t see why you were downvoted. I fully get why the blog writer didn&#x27;t include USB-C with this awesome project. But there&#x27;s now a growing group of people who simply can&#x27;t use USB-A anymore with their laptops. Most will have an adapter, but not all.

That’s if you even have a USB A socket anymore!

You and your parent clearly shows the current boring, uninspiring state of HN community. Well done.Now, where is the predictible sandboxing guy to counter your predictible &quot;security implications&quot; argument?

From the project webpage:&gt; It has a USB port in the corner. If you plug it into a computer, it boots in about 6 seconds and shows up over USB as a flash drive and a virtual serial port that you can use to log into the card&#x27;s shell.The parent of this thread has a valid point here and the insecurity implications of this is nefarious if one isn&#x27;t careful.While it is a technically cool fun project, I can imagine a bad actor taking this to DEFCON&#x2F;CCC or even a tech-centric concert and mass producing this to emulate a USB drive, but is also a keylogger or a remote access tool of some sort which reminds me of the nightmares of BadUSB.

Were I a system security engineer, I should think I&#x27;d have a sanitized way to plug in a USB device.How else would one do forensics?

I think it&#x27;s very considerate to not add lead to a business card people may put in their pockets.

It’s actually probably harder these days to build something that isn’t RoHS compliant as a hobbyist than one that is.  The vast majority of what you can buy from Digikey and Mouser and whatnot will be compliant, PCB shops will mostly do lead-free HASL (though you’d want ENIG anyway if you’re going to use a stencil), and lead-free solder pastes are more common than leaded ones.  Basically you’ll probably have to either use old stock parts or pull some really old solder out of the fridge as a hobbyist to end up with lead.

Avoiding leaded solder is trivial, and it is something that&#x27;s hopefully handled a bunch, so why not avoid lead? I didn&#x27;t know &quot;following best practices you have to follow in your daily work anyhow&quot; is &quot;obsessing&quot;.

I don&#x27;t get this lead-free hatred on internet forums. People say they can&#x27;t solder with lead-free, and that it is terrible, and that joints look dull. So much hatred that I actually tried it out. And I found the process is basically just the same and there is nothing to be afraid of. Just set the solder iron temperature a bit higher and that&#x27;s it. Works like a charm.

This is true, but given that I&#x27;m creating it, why _not_ use a lead-free process, especially given that lead is known to be very soft and toxic?

Industry wide, it&#x27;s about sanitizing a highly toxic substance from the supply chain. I&#x27;ve met a child whose father worked with lead, and would hug him after coming home. The child ended up with permanent brain damage from ingesting traces of leaded dust on the father&#x27;s clothing. In this case, it&#x27;s more likely about keeping lead out of something likely to get crunched up in a parent&#x27;s wallet and then shown to their child.Lead causes permanent brain damage in children. There is no detectable amount of lead in the blood of children which is considered safe. While an adult body absorbs roughly 95% of lead into its bones, children&#x27;s bodies end up storing lead in blood and soft tissue where it causes damage. When untreated, it can take months for lead to exit a child&#x27;s bloodstream.I would never consider reducing the lead used in something I&#x27;ve built to be wasted time.

I spent a month visiting a PCB factory in China. I met the people working with lead soldering.Seriously, please choose lead-free.Pregnant women weren&#x27;t allowed to eat in the cafeteria due to the high number of miscarriages. The people inhaling the stuff all day... let&#x27;s just say that had a reputation among the other factory workers for being a bit mentally challenged.

Well, it is appropriate as a business card for an embedded systems engineers, not so much for a system security one!More seriously, I never managed to understand the &quot;obsession&quot; with ROHS (this here is just an example):&gt;I made sure to have a lead-free process—the boards, parts, and solder paste are all RoHS—so that I wouldn&#x27;t feel bad about giving them to people.I mean, you are creating something that (besides being very nice) is not needed, that very likely will end soon in the trash (and that contains anyway a few grams of &quot;far from clean&quot; materials) and you worry about the tiny amount of lead in the solder tin?

Would you use anything given to you from a random individual at defcon?

That was my first thought. If someone gave me this at defcon I would not use it.

should be safe, in theory, sure. But in practice?

The whole beauty of USB ports is that we have one unified interface for practically everything. It can&#x27;t be safe without giving that up, adding some friction to user interaction, or doing some dark art involving centrally signed devices that we expect won&#x27;t be broken. If anybody can produce storage and input devices that plug into a universal port and just work, malicious input devices can be made to physically look like storage devices in the eyes of the user. I&#x27;m not saying we shouldn&#x27;t make more security conscious tradeoffs, I&#x27;m just saying that there are tradeoffs to be made, and most users probably won&#x27;t appreciate the added friction.

Is that really the responsibility of the person making the card?This is the responsibility of the creators of the USB hardware, firmware, motherboard firmware, electrical design, OS developers &#x2F; driver developers.It should be safe to plug in a USB device by default

If their business card hires them, they’re hired!

I&#x27;d say that&#x27;s a business opportunity lost.

And just like that, you committed a felony.

OTOH, a security conscious engineer could exploit this to have the business card call home and automatically block communications from the company so one does not waste time with them ;)

Perhaps you could do something like this, incorporating the jack into the PCB instead of an elevated component?
 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;d&#x2F;df&#x2F;XJACK_network_card_extended.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;d&#x2F;df&#x2F;XJACK_ne...</a>

ethernet on a business card is just not as viable.

It would be pretty sweet if it was Bluetooth instead. A Bluetooth serial console would be pretty kickass.

Then build an embedded system to plug it into ...

While it&#x27;s a fascinating project I&#x27;d have some security concerns about plugging someone&#x27;s USB business card into my computer.

That makes no sense. This guy isnt advertising his mad &quot;registering firstnamelastname.com&quot; skills, he&#x27;s advertising his mad embedded engineering skills.

If only they&#x27;d invested more into a professional looking email address. Pretty cool nonetheless!

Before Oracle there was Sun, which managed Java Card just the same way, and there is the consortium as well.Given the December 12th release, I expect those issues from March, to have been fixed already.

On that note, the platform had a bunch of (medium) vulnerabilities early this year [0][1], but I haven&#x27;t managed to find a follow up.(Which isn&#x27;t unusual - this is Oracle. Knowledge of patches is precious information.)[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;22&#x2F;oracles_java_card&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;22&#x2F;oracles_java_card&#x2F;</a>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seclists.org&#x2F;fulldisclosure&#x2F;2019&#x2F;Mar&#x2F;35" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seclists.org&#x2F;fulldisclosure&#x2F;2019&#x2F;Mar&#x2F;35</a>

Most credit cards run Java(Card), another very interesting technology

Embedded systems engineers are (usually) paid a lot less than full stack engineers.Edit: I seem to be getting (a lot!) of downvotes on this. I thought it was quite well known, but apparently not.Full Stack Engineer salary: $93,598 [1]Embedded Software Engineer salary: $74,758[2][1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.payscale.com&#x2F;research&#x2F;US&#x2F;Job=Full_Stack_Engineer&#x2F;Salary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.payscale.com&#x2F;research&#x2F;US&#x2F;Job=Full_Stack_Engineer...</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.payscale.com&#x2F;research&#x2F;US&#x2F;Job=Embedded_Engineer&#x2F;Salary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.payscale.com&#x2F;research&#x2F;US&#x2F;Job=Embedded_Engineer&#x2F;S...</a>

Designing the layout of the PCB. Populating it with surface-mount components using home-made solder paste stencils and an oven. Selecting the MCU. Figuring out what kernel drivers are needed and what can be stripped out. Searching the web for datasheets and drivers that others have created&#x2F;ported. Building the userland. Debugging and testing.Like many pieces of technology, once you lay out the steps it starts to look as though each one, and therefore the whole, are achievable to a highly-motivated but somewhat typical person. And it&#x27;s true! But even so, few people develop the whole set of skills to build something from start to finish, even notwithstanding the incredible help you can get nowadays from open-source software, consumer access to services such as PCB manufacturing, and online documentation. Even in a high-achieving community focused on building stuff, like this one, I doubt many posters here have completed as impressive an individual project.

After reading the post, i was under the impression that the author really did some shopping for major components and assembled everything into a fun shape. Obviously i know nothing about electronic board design, so could you explain which extraordinary skill this required ?EDIT : ok, i missed the part where he actually designed the whole board, obviously..

The bias of HN towards web dev is pretty funny sometimes. I&#x27;d definitely be very impressed if I received these business cards, it&#x27;s more novel than other PCB business cards I&#x27;ve seen and took a lot more initiative and effort with all the sourcing and research required. But the design and integration work is something I&#x27;d expect any embedded systems engineer to be capable of, and the vast majority of those engineers are making less than all of you guys at FAANG talking about kubernetes or whatever it is that goes on there

While I&#x27;m impressed by how low the bill of materials is, I can&#x27;t but put into perspective the kind of skills the authors of the post has, and how mindbogglingly expensive they must be. Contrary to what the media says, it seems that the digital era has made (some) human beings more essential than ever ...

If you set aside the security concerns for a moment, this is a great way to make the first impression.

For a few individual, small and one-sided boards you can get surprisingly good results with just a hot plate.

It’s QFN though so you need a reflow oven to make the boards at home.I’ve had bad experiences with the allwinner chips (the boards I had years ago were very unstable) but the mainline kernel support is very exciting. That you can order a few phones built around them now too is just awesome.

Very good point.And this one of the dangers of basing your supply chain on AliExpress. I&#x27;ve had to caution clients that just because they found some normally expensive component dirt cheap on Amazon or AliExpress, doesn&#x27;t mean that they&#x27;ll still be available in 6 months when you need 1000 more.Base your BOM on a manufacturer-approved supplier. If you can find the same parts for less elsewhere (assuming they&#x27;re not counterfeit), go for it.

It is an unusually cheap system, and OP clearly did some thorough research on finding a really well integrated SoC that is available for super low piece part prices.  I&#x27;d guess Allwinner targets that part at some ultra high volume application and some AliExpress sellers managed to capture some trays of excess parts to sell individually.  I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if the unit price there is lower than what Allwinner quotes for volume.

The one that blew me away was the JW5211 switching regulator. I thought he was being a bit extravagant by not just using a cheap linear regulator...but that buck regulator costs 4.5 cents.Guess I&#x27;m a little behind the times. Sure, throw three of them on the board at that price.Only other surprise was the MOSFET labeled &quot;Q_NMOS_GSD&quot; for the status&#x2F;power LED. At first glance, with the pull-up resistor, it looks like the FET does nothing. Then I located the reference net (a flag would have helped) on pin 13, so you can turn on&#x2F;off the LED with the processor, or (depending on initial state of that pin) it will power up with the LED on and turn off only after the processor boots. Neat!

Waw, I wasn&#x27;t expecting the components to be that cheap. That said I haven&#x27;t bought such components in a very long while.

Which reminded me of the good ol&#x27; matchbox web server:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20000620180950&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wearables.stanford.edu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20000620180950&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wearables....</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20000617162718fw_&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wearables.stanford.edu&#x2F;hardware.html#webserver" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20000617162718fw_&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wearabl...</a>

The links from that page leads to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.sipeed.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;lichee&#x2F;nano.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.sipeed.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;lichee&#x2F;nano.html</a> which is a Linux computer in form factor similar to a SD Card

Don&#x27;t miss the &quot;Designing my Linux Business Card&quot; post<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thirtythreeforty.net&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;designing-my-linux-business-card&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thirtythreeforty.net&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;designing-my-...</a>Edit - I find it amazing that the CPUs for these are sold for $0.90 on Taobao, without needing a bulk discount or anything.

yeah good tip =) i already knew them but thanks anyway!

Not exactly what you&#x27;re asking for, but you may enjoy Shenzhen I&#x2F;O and other titles from Zachtronics: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zachtronics.com&#x2F;shenzhen-io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zachtronics.com&#x2F;shenzhen-io&#x2F;</a>

We&#x27;ve made some pretty capable hardware at my job on top of the pyboard&#x2F;micropython. We&#x27;ve outgrown it in certain cases but it&#x27;s really powerful being able to build something for potential critical business needs (like one off testing platforms) without spending weeks rewriting drivers.

Thanks for the Adafruit tip. My 9yo daughter is learning scratch, so the block based programming is going to be great to try out with her.

MicroPython is fantastic for education and rapid prototyping with hardware - definitely try it out! It can be difficult to make complex long-running applications because of post-GC memory fragmentation and frequent dynamic allocations by the VM, but the Python syntax makes it all worthwhile. It also has a supportive and friendly community where it&#x27;s easy to get support, and the official &#x27;PyBoards&#x27; are great.MakeCode is also similar to what you describe - check out Adafruit&#x27;s Blockly&#x2F;JS simulator:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;makecode.adafruit.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;makecode.adafruit.com&#x2F;</a>Note that CircuitPython is Adafruit&#x27;s fork which focuses more on education than industrial prototyping. So even within the embedded Python ecosystem, you have options.Embedded development is so easy these days, it is just fantastic. The barrier to entry, in both cost and complexity, is so low now that just about anyone can apply physical automation to the problems that they see in their life and community. I&#x27;m excited to see what emerges in the next couple of decades.

If you&#x27;ve never tried Python including a REPL for whatever project you&#x27;d use Arduino for it&#x27;s definitely worth giving a shot. Different kind of game than C.

Today an esp32 is more bang for your buck. 80mhz dual core, has wifi and bluetooth, and so onEdit: and you can program it with the arduino IDE

Hardware is so cheap and accessible these days, just get an Arduino board. There are lots of kits available with sensors and actuators, and it&#x27;s all so easy to use it&#x27;s like building with Legos.

Loved the article, but loved even more to learn about MicroPython.As an amateur programmer that has never actually physically handled hobby micro-controller type boards, but has read a lot about them, it was amazing to be able to try out the emulator at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;micropython.org&#x2F;unicorn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;micropython.org&#x2F;unicorn&#x2F;</a>Make the leds blink, see how servo control works etc, all in the browser without having to actually buy any hardware! I had never seen anything like this.Would love if others could point me to more advanced emulators of hardware micro controllers (if there is such a thing!)

The censor is only on the picture.Clearly you&#x27;ve never been called 20 times a day for 2 weeks straight during looming deadlines about Extended Car Warranties!

But isn&#x27;t masking the phone number kinda defying the purpose?Extremely impressive

Very impressive stuff! There are so many stupid comments here.

With 900MHz and 32MB RAM it is more powerful than PCs when Doom launched (around 50MHz and 8MB RAM), so I guess it should be capable running Doom.

Wait this thing can run 720p video? AmazingHow cool would a mini lcd be with your contact details

My eyebrows went up when I saw the processor was so cheap, but then I went and found a datasheet for it and...$1.42 buys- ARM926EJS core at 900MHz consuming 54mA when on and idle- 32MB DDR RAM- 720p H264 @ 30fps hardware decode- Audio DAC capable of 192kHz over I2S- USB OTG (not full host)- LCD RGB (FPC) interface at either 1024x600 or 1280x720 @ 60fps- Touchpanel I&#x2F;OSources:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnx-software.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;08&#x2F;17&#x2F;licheepi-nano-cheap-sd-card-sized-linux-board&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnx-software.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;08&#x2F;17&#x2F;licheepi-nano-cheap-...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linux-sunxi.org&#x2F;images&#x2F;b&#x2F;ba&#x2F;F1C100s_Datasheet_V1.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linux-sunxi.org&#x2F;images&#x2F;b&#x2F;ba&#x2F;F1C100s_Datasheet_V1.0.p...</a>---My version of this would have a tiny LCD, buttons, and a Wi-Fi interface. I know all of those exist in incredibly inexpensive formats. Adds to todo list

I wonder if tiny solar cells covering the entire surface of the card would be enough to power it. Not sure if the wifi module can be powered with &lt; 1 watt of electricity though.

Use usb for power but also spin up an access point

&gt; instead of USBAnd how would you power the card?

There&#x27;s the Lichee Nano. Same chip, available with a WiFi module that plugs into the SD card slot. $8 total. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seeedstudio.com&#x2F;Sipeed-Lichee-Nano-Linux-Development-Board-16M-Flash-WiFi-Version-p-2893.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seeedstudio.com&#x2F;Sipeed-Lichee-Nano-Linux-Develop...</a>

Very cool project! It would be neat to incorporate WiFi into the next version instead of USB. Then you could publish a mobile app to communicate with it. It would be fun to play with at parties. 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gridconnect.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;esp8266ex-tiny-wireless-802-11-b-g-n-chip" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gridconnect.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;esp8266ex-tiny-wireless...</a> .

Nice work! MicroPython is nice as well although I prefer C for now, but that&#x27;s probably just because MicroPython would not be very feasible at the moment for projects we do.I have been dreaming about making our card (see my profile here if interested) run a real (well embedded but) OS; we had a version which could run some embedded OSes but to cut on material costs, we had to remove a mcu which got us down now to less than 23kB of workable memory. It is possible to run &#x27;an OS&#x27; in that like computers from the 70-80s; the speed of the current mcu matches more with that era as well.I like this kind of thing, but I would want a display on it and maybe no USB (just a radio circuit communicate with it for updates etc).

My thought too. There was some years ago a trend of doing business card that could fit in a CD player.I had the same thought back then !

If I were a pentester, I&#x27;d hand them out with your name and readme on it ;)

I do wonder how easy it would be for someone who has your business card to frame you... Is it possible to overwrite the OS on these with something malicious?

Ha someone on Reddit suggested this. See the thing is, they have my contact info printed on them, so I&#x27;m really easy for the police to find after everything is hacked!

Kevin Mitnick famously has detachable lockpicking tools in his card.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mitnicksecurity.com&#x2F;shopping&#x2F;kevin-mitnick-lock-pick-business-card" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mitnicksecurity.com&#x2F;shopping&#x2F;kevin-mitnick-lock-...</a>

Maybe I&#x27;m twisted but my first thought if that if I were a pen tester I would want business cards exactly like this.  And yes, they would run Linux... and some other things. :-)

Well probably he does since it&#x27;s his job? This is more like his art project, nothing wrong with that.

It seems that&#x27;s literally his job and this is a hobby. Some people paint, others make business cards that run Linux :)

I read a story once about a fellow in, I believe, St. Louis who devotes all of his energy to rescuing stray dogs. It’s an obsession.People ask him why he doesn’t apply that energy to helping the homeless instead.As he says, there are plenty of people tackling that problem (debatable), this is his passion, and I imagine he asks, or should ask, the questioner what they’ve done to help the homeless recently.Follow your passions.(Plus, as others have pointed out, this is a personal project and he does this stuff full-time, so yours is a particularly odd complaint.)

I wonder what the world would we be living in if people like you were actually focusing on automation and not wasting time reading and commenting on HN posts.Maybe we wouldn&#x27;t be living in such a lowly automated reality, using concepts from the previous centuries. Robotics might even make sense...

&gt; I&#x27;m skeptical that there&#x27;s much room for effective solutions between extremely simple and dumb automation, and near-human level AI.That&#x27;s literally my job, and there&#x27;s a ton of room actually. You just have to be able (and willing) to have the ability to fall back to humans at any point in the process. Like real world &quot;fix-and-continue&quot; debugging...

I have worked on some industrial automation stuff. In my experience, it&#x27;s genuinely really hard to do in a way that&#x27;s actually better than manual systems, or very narrowly-scoped and simple automation. The number of edge cases and failure modes is mind-boggling. I&#x27;m skeptical that there&#x27;s much room for effective solutions between extremely simple and dumb automation, and near-human level AI.

I wonder what world would we be living in if people like this fellow were actually focusing on automation and not on making business cards that run Linux.Maybe we wouldn&#x27;t be living in such a lowly automated reality, using concepts from the previous centuries. Robotics might even make sense...

I just finished Michael Abrash&#x27;s Black Book. Lots of assembly. You may like it. Like 30 hours of reading.

Where does a web-dev turn to to get started in this as a hobby?

I mainly work in web-dev, but working in embedded systems is kind of my hobby. It&#x27;s kind of refreshing working on bare-metal, optimizing up-to single bytes of data, when I&#x27;m usually working on layers and layers of abstraction everyday.

I can&#x27;t tell from the datasheets and the description. Does this ucontroller have an MMU?

I expect that it being a M3 it had a MPU but not am MMU.

The roadblock has always been the MMU. Vanilla Linux won&#x27;t work without it, and uCLinux is always in some strange phase of support for newer architectures if it&#x27;s supported at all.I found a decent port of uCLinux to the Cortex-M3 once, but the host core was 120 MHz and it was pretty much a science experiment and not much more.

Oh geez I can&#x27;t imagine how long it would take to compile Linux on that slow of a processor.

You were living large! My first Linux computer was a 20Mhz 80386SX with a 40MB hard drive partitioned half for Windows 3.0 and half for Linux (SLS) and swap. It had a whopping 4MB of RAM and I also compiled my own kernel making sure to trim down features as much as possible. It was magic seeing X11 come up for the first time just like the big-bucks Sun boxes!

There&#x27;s embedded devices with an order of magnitude more CPU and two orders more RAM, if you&#x27;re being strict about what counts as &quot;embedded&quot;. If you&#x27;re not, probably another order of magnitude on each.

&#x27;computing progress&#x27; seems mostly resolution increase.

My first few PCs weren&#x27;t even PCs, I didn&#x27;t know what they were until I was a little bit older. Somehow I intuited them naturally though; I liked exploring and being curious about what I was looking at.First one I remember was a Commodore 64, along with a 600 page book full of BASIC that you could type out and record on cassette to have your own game. The book was total gibberish to anyone else; it was just pure code with no explanation. But that&#x27;s what the C64 gave you; an interactive environment on boot where you could program a new game and write it to a cassette. By default. If you wanted to play a game you had to type `RUN` or maybe one or two other things to set it up. But you wouldn&#x27;t know that, because you just had an interpreter on a basic blue and white screen.Worst bit was the 10 minutes of spasmodic strobe animations that showed you the game was loading. But also each game controlled those loading animations. You had to know what game you wanted to play, and be sure of it, or otherwise you could just flip to the B-side and get a different game.After that I think we had a BBC Micro at school but I&#x27;m not sure. All I remember is an adventure game and one of those classic 5&quot; floppies. I still really love the look and feel of inserting a floppy and manually locking it in. Floppies and cassettes and VHS&#x27;s minidiscs were truly fantastic for the time. They were still mechanical, unlike CDs.Then on my dad&#x27;s side I and my siblings got an Acorn PC and a bunch of random floppies. None of them made any sense but some of them did cool things when you ran them. I remember hiding from my family and putting in the floppies that made flashing colours and watching it until time passed.Must have been 11 or 12 years old before we first got a PC and by that point I was utterly fascinated. It was some shitty off-the-shelf eMachines thing but it was the best we could get; I managed to retrofit a decent graphics card in it a little bit later.

Lucky! We had the same 486 system but only a 40MB disk. I had to spend some lawn mowing money to get a 400MB second drive so I could install Sid Meier’s Gettysburg. :)

Well now I feel old. I remember buying a 486 with 8MB and thinking &quot;I&#x27;m really living in the future now!&quot; The mhz were ridiculous and -- according to my memory -- most instructions ran in a single cycle too! (Warning: my memory is not a reliable gauge of the state of computing at the time.)8MB was pretty extravagant but it turned out to be a good call even though it could be had for half the price within a few years.

Calling this embedded system feels like insult to the spirit of &#x27;running light without overbyte&#x27;, because it&#x27;s so comically capable.My first PC had 66&#x2F;33 MHz 80486 processor and 8 MB ram, 320 MB HDD. You could run AutoCAD, play Doom, Civilization, have dual boot for Linux, Windows 3.11 etc. It could compile Linux from source.

Same. Anyone got a guide for getting it to run Linux? (except this article!)

Not to mention that a tiny chip in a micro-SD case can hold a library of a hundred movies.

I wonder how many Linux instances are running in an average modern automobile.

Twenty years ago, a car stereo that ran Linux <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Empeg_Car" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Empeg_Car</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20000815214315&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wired.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology&#x2F;0,1282,18236,00.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20000815214315&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wired.com&#x2F;...</a> was the toast of Slashdot <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tech.slashdot.org&#x2F;story&#x2F;99&#x2F;03&#x2F;03&#x2F;1216251&#x2F;linux-powered-car-mp3-player" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tech.slashdot.org&#x2F;story&#x2F;99&#x2F;03&#x2F;03&#x2F;1216251&#x2F;linux-power...</a> .

Any numbers on current consumption of F1C100s?

Reminds me of the (now defunct) CHIP for $9[1].Have you checked out some of the alt pi boards like Orange Pi or Onion Omega2Plus?1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;1598272670&#x2F;chip-the-worlds-first-9-computer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;1598272670&#x2F;chip-the-wor...</a>

Raspberry Pi&#x27;s goal is computer science and coding education. They aren&#x27;t going to make anything that isn&#x27;t beginner friendly, and can&#x27;t at least run a Linux GUI, have basic networking, support standard peripherals etc.

There are a lot of tiny travel routers that run Linux.  Mostly little MIPS boards inside.

Why do you feel that a hardware product being too powerful is a problem?

I wish raspberrypi could release something similar. Their product are still too powerful for my taste.

To me it&#x27;s truly mind-bogging that a tiny $1.42 chip contains almost everything needed to boot Linux: a 500mhz cpu, 32MB SDRAM, 2D GPU, SD&#x2F;MMC support, and USB controller, all packaged inside a 10mm x 10mm chip? It makes me really want to get into embedded development.

You can&#x27;t take care of everything - there are only so many hours in a day.

Tech- and designwise, very neat.And then there&#x27;s the occasional sourfaced old party pooper like myself. Two seconds in, and I no longer see the sweet wizardry or the polished black surface; I only see @gmail, internally translating to &quot;someone who doesn&#x27;t really care&quot;.

I agree with you on both the points.One more concern for me is the utility of a business card is just once, if you want to contact them in future you&#x27;ll store the details on your phone and when you put the card in the pocket it likely directly ends in the trash.As for WhatsApp or other chat app &#x27;contact&#x27; sharing it is not limited to business&#x2F;professionals and so it has become a norm in several countries.

Yeah, I don’t really get the practice of sharing contact cards with people. A coworker sent me his once and now I have the names of his family members, his birthday, and home address.

I find that business cards are still helpful to get the spelling of people&#x27;s names right - otherwise you have to either hand your phone over to the other person and have them type their name into your phone, or at least have them text you the spelling, which can be awkward to ask for and anyway has more friction than accepting a business card.Also, sharing WhatsApp contacts makes me uncomfortable. There&#x27;s various fields that people can store in their private contacts system which is inappropriate to share without permission - birthdays and home addresses at least. When you share a contact, you have to remember to sanitize the contact before you send it. A business card only consists of details which are pre-approved to share with strangers, so business cards don&#x27;t have this problem.

iOS has this standard, default camera app

What I don&#x27;t know is why all phones don&#x27;t have a QR&#x2F;barcode reader application preinstalled.A QR code is the best of both worlds.

Actual card exchanges seem to be used as a polite way to fob uninteresting people off as much as an actual exchange of contact info with people you want to talk to later.This seems to be a bit of an exception. They&#x27;re not really expensive, but they are expensive enough that you&#x27;re not going to just hand them out to random annoying recruiters or wantrepreneuers you want to fob off.

This is cool as it showcases his embedded engineering prowess.Years of startup meets[1] have left a bad taste in mouth for the business cards. I&#x27;ve seen people exchange business cards ceremoniously, only to give a missed call to each other immediately.Business cards are a waste of money, paper and I don&#x27;t want to get started on the plastics. I honestly thought that proliferation of NFC in smartphones would help to change this behaviour, but with Google shutting down Android Beam(its reasoning: no one is using it) and newer, cheaper smartphones without NFC; I think that ship has sailed.At-least, in WhatsApp countries; people share contacts via WhatsApp.[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hitstartup.com&#x2F;honest-startup-meet&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hitstartup.com&#x2F;honest-startup-meet&#x2F;</a>

These days KiCad does a good job, especially if you&#x27;re just starting out.Some CERN developers started working on it a few years ago and it&#x27;s been much improved since then.

Start with a simple, known-good design, then figure out why each part is there.After you get some experience reverse engineering existing designs, start trying to build something simple. Thinking blinking lights without a processor.Warning: Embedded tools are not user friendly. Because most people who use them, use them all the time.Eagle has a free tier. I think it&#x27;s the EDA tool we used in my CS&#x2F;CSE courses.There are open source alternatives, but they had even rougher edges a decade ago when I was using them.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learn.sparkfun.com&#x2F;tutorials&#x2F;using-eagle-board-layout&#x2F;all" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learn.sparkfun.com&#x2F;tutorials&#x2F;using-eagle-board-layou...</a>

Buy an Arduino clone, install the crappy GUI and see where that leads you.Forget simulators. IME, software devs obsess about simulators. I think they&#x27;re mostly a waste of time: at the beginner levels we&#x27;re talking about here, signals are slow (after 30 years in the business, I can&#x27;t believe I now think a 16MHz signal is &quot;slow&quot; :-) and parts are cheap. Just dive right in and blink a few LEDs or something.

There are a lot of electronics tutorials that you can find starting from Arduino. SparkFun and AdaFruit sell various kits and have a lot of tutorials for things like how to solder.

Read the datasheets for your parts. Good datasheets will tell you what components you need, what values they need to have, and how to layout the board. They are often written assuming some knowledge but you&#x27;ll have terms to google.

Open source projects like Arduino and the Pyboard have schematics available. If you want to learn about about why those components are there read the datasheets for the major ICs, the board designer will usually be following the manufacturers recommendations.Emulation is rarely ever done, it&#x27;d be a high effort project with a lot of nuance to specify external hardware and the hardware is cheap anyway. A rough flow for an embedded project would be to start with a development board from the MCU manufacturer to get a head start on firmware, move on to a custom dev board of your actual product but with more easily accessible pins and test points, and then iterate on the final formfactor board.For a hobbyist start with an arduino and a pyboard connected to a breadboard. Once you&#x27;re happy with the firmware and circuit design then start with the open source schematic and modify it to add your new components and lay it out on your custom board.

Try the book &quot;Practical Electronics for Inventors&quot; by Scherz and Monk.There&#x27;s a chapter on microcontrollers.

I really want to learn being able compile and solder an embedded system but I don&#x27;t know where to start. Assuming I have the parts, tools and materials, how can I learn where to put capacitors&#x2F;resistors etc in a custom design? What kind of simulators are good at testing these ideas without needing to waste expensive components? What was missing in my Computer Engineering curriculum which paints those circuit parts (except the cpu) completely alien to me?

This is one of the coolest things I have seen on HN this year !

You do then link to the GitHub repo which has a PDF of your resume with all of your contact info.

It&#x27;s only fuzzed in the pictures. The actual card has the phone number. I just didn&#x27;t want a ton of people from the internet hitting my phone directly! Email is fine, however, so that&#x27;s un-blurred.

SMS and call based spam is much harder to filter out than emails.

Interested why the author would fuzz out the phone number on their business card?

Impressive work. But I&#x27;d ask for a few leds with some easy to use method (can they be a device, like dev&#x2F;led1 ?). The Arduino has one in port 13 (usually), and it is very useful for useful for minimal projects, like a blinking led.(Bonus points for a few leds, so you can show the Knight Rider animation, or a 7-segment display.)

I think it&#x27;s fantastic. I don&#x27;t typically hand out a physical business card often. So the recipient would be someone that I would feel would generally find the project exciting and intriguing, and it provides a great conversation piece. 
It&#x27;s simple enough to discuss it briefly and mention that for any security-conscious individuals, they can check out the GitHub that&#x27;s stated on the card and see the code and still have the same insight if not more than if they had just plugged in the device. 
For anyone else, the information they need from a business card is all still nicely stated, in a design that&#x27;s enticing even without functionality. The production cost is easy to justify with the chance of achieving whatever your goal may be, whether it be securing a job offer or generating new business.

Both the card and the article look cool, thanks for making this. Do you have a mailing list for article updates?

I have thought about it and I am writing one entitled &quot;Mastering Embedded Linux.&quot; Its goal is to take you from zero to expert with hacking embedded Linux systems.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thirtythreeforty.net&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2019&#x2F;08&#x2F;mastering-embedded-linux-part-1-concepts&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thirtythreeforty.net&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2019&#x2F;08&#x2F;mastering-emb...</a>Hopefully the next installment will come out today. The holidays are letting me catch up on writing.

The author: did you think about creating a course on embedded hardware and software design and launch a funding campaign on Kickstarter. I would definitely help fund it.

901, I live in the same city as this guy!

I rarely keep business carts, typically I scan them with my phone and throw them away but... If I hadn&#x27;t read the article and someone handed me that business card, my jaw would have dropped all the way to the other side of the earth.

OP here. Bingo! Karl Schroeder is fairly obscure unfortunately... I love Ventus and Lady of Mazes. I picked this handle mainly because it&#x27;s unique everywhere I&#x27;ve tried to sign up.

Given the site name, I wonder if he is a fan of Kurt Schroeder&#x27;s books.

This is brilliant. I’m an embedded systems engineer by training (and interest - I still occasionally solder things to bend them to my will!) and absolutely love the implementation. It’s aesthetically pleasing and functional in both interesting and fun ways. Very slick.

I remember when only the distro would fit on a business card:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bootable_business_card" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bootable_business_card</a><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.damnsmalllinux.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;about_damn_small_linux.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.damnsmalllinux.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;about_damn_small_linux.ht...</a>

It is a gimmick, the value is that he designed it himself and no one else does it. If you just buy a computer card and install your own software, it is just a really impractical waste of resources.

I love this! And while it&#x27;s well suited to the person (embedded engineer), it could be realigned to someone else by changing the tagline. For example, &quot;This card runs vim!&quot; for developers, or &quot;This card runs Linux containers!&quot; for devops, etc.

you probably have cards in your wallet right now that run (a decidedly stripped down) version of Java.

Your SIM cards, credit&#x2F;debit cards, GPG smartcard, Bitcoin hardware wallets, etc. already do (probably) run Java :)

As others have mentioned, there’s literally a thing called Java Card: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Java_Card" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Java_Card</a>

Maybe in the next 10 years there will be a business card running a JVM.

This is a beautiful piece of art and engineering!

Take a look at the WiPy, its an ESP32 board setup for micropython

You don&#x27;t really even need to build one. Buy a $20 toaster oven, turn it on, and put your board in. When your solder paste reflows, turn it off. There is a reflow waveform to follow, but for small runs and personal projects is hardly worth the time and money. Check out YouTube four specifics.

I really appreciate this write up. I didn’t know about JCL and their assembly prices seem very reasonable. I also usually order my parts from Newark but their shipping is kind of silly on small orders ($8 for anything under 2lb).Yesterday I started a small electronics project (Bluetooth connected tachometer for my motorcycle), and want to use ESP32 chips for it. I am the kind of masochist who in the past soldered SMD components by hand, but with these new services at my disposal could do so much better with that. Time to build a reflow oven?

Older usb specs are the serial ports of this era

I want to see the USB-C equivalent of this.:(

Like most business cards, you mean. Actually, if I got one of these I’d probably keep it around just for novelty.

interesting idea but the system is pretty much not able to be used for any task and this type of thing will end up as landfill.

How well does this survive a static-prone coat pocket during the dry winter months?

OP here. CPython is very heavyweight on small systems like these, with multi-second imports, multi-megabyte stdlib, and limited library availability (cross building native extensions is tricky).MicroPython dodges all this.

This is a very cool project. I know very little about embedded engineering. I have a question: Why would MicroPython be needed? I thought it was useful only for simple chips, and this chip runs a full Linux, so couldn&#x27;t you run CPython on it?

Kids today don&#x27;t appreciate that in the 1990s, if you wanted a bootable business card (BBC), you had to satisfy yourself with a CDROM, cut to &quot;business card&quot; form factor, which would boot, but you had to supply your own computer.Immortalised as the Linuxcare BBC:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archiveos.org&#x2F;lnx-bbc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archiveos.org&#x2F;lnx-bbc&#x2F;</a>(@schoen here, among others, will be ... extraordinarily familiar with this.)Hilliard&#x27;s solution here is the 2020s variant.This is also a testemant to the fact that it&#x27;s not just ICs which are now cheap (as opposed to, in the 1990s, static data archives), but entire SoCs.The main limitation is now power supplies, though the prospect of parasitic OTA power extraction is becoming a possiblity, perhaps also thin-film PV and small-scale power storage systems.Which means that peel-and-stick computing is well within reach, if not a present reality. I suspect Hilliard&#x27;s BoM would fall by 25-50% in bulk, and given technological advances, should be halving every 18-24 months, which means that $1.50 systems are available now, $0.75 in roughly two years, and only a few more halvings before the 1995 Dilbert Unix user advice, &quot;here&#x27;s a nickle, kid, get yourself a better computer&quot;, will be a practical reality:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;assets.amuniversal.com&#x2F;6b08abb09fbb012f2fe600163e41dd5b" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;assets.amuniversal.com&#x2F;6b08abb09fbb012f2fe600163e41d...</a>Applied to packages, this means that shipments can report their own progress. Applied to a vehicle, these will permit covert tracking on the cheap. Applied to arbitrary surfaces, indoors or out, surveillance of a given location (audio, video, or other sensors). RFID tags will give way to fully-capable computers, integrated into inventory and pricing stickers. Applied to a drone or glider, an integrated surveillance-and-flight-control package (combine with very small body and lightweight electric motors for power-gliders deployable en masse, not individually threats, but capable of close-up, large-scale monitoring and guidance for more capable systems). Applied to windows, tapping of conversations inside. Likely tapping (or hacking) into available wireless comms nets.The devices will be well within reach of white hats and black, as well as numerous shades of grey.Decreasing costs mean that activities not presently viable, many of which won&#x27;t benefit the common weal, will come into viablity, much as email, fax, pop-up, and phone spam over the past three decades.Power, sensors, and antennae are likely the biggest limiting factors at this point, though all are also rapidly miniaturising.

Excellent and Ingenious work!I hope to do something like this one day by myself (have to build up my Electronics background first :-)

You might know this and use it as a short hand, but just in case: ARM doesn&#x27;t use a BIOS of any sort, so there is no POST, just a bunch of vendor blobs (burned into the chip) that do bootstrapping then jump to your bootloader.The biggest problem in his case is probably the 8 MiB serial flash; that is going to be rather slow to load from.

This is pretty cool.What&#x27;s the time spent on bootup? Hardware POST? I remember seeing some Linux can boot in under a second. It would be cool to see the business card come to life instantly.

JavaCard is hilariously weak though, as far as Java is concerned. Support for &quot;int&quot; datatypes is optional, and there&#x27;s no such thing as java.lang.String.To your point though, it&#x27;s pretty amazing to see the sheer number of devices with it deployed, and the things that can be done with sim card applets (mobile banking, etc.).

If I was a Java person, I would definitely want to hand out Java Card business cards.I wonder what would be involved in getting Java Card business cards?

My first thought is that literally billions of people already do something similar every day. They use a card that runs its own small, programmable computer, that is portable, energy efficient, and can be powered &#x27;wirelessly.&#x27; It&#x27;s called a universal integrated circuit card (UICC) -- or the chip used in credit cards &#x2F; sim &#x2F; ID cards.The OS these cards run is often referred to as the &quot;Java Card Platform.&quot; The OS has many of the same features you would expect from a modern operating system like support for multiple programs, I&#x2F;O, and very strong crypto primitives. It even has features you wouldn&#x27;t expect (because some applets give you access to APIs that aren&#x27;t currently open source available outside that environment.)

Makes the author stand out a lot more than yet another GitHub or LinkedIn profile will.

Awesome project!However, practically do anyone use business card these days? What does it do which a LinkedIn or GitHub profile wouldn’t?

It&#x27;s from Gibsons &quot;Virtual Light&quot;, a vastly better book than Snow Crash. Highly recommended!

I get serious Snow Crash vibes from this.

Gibson&#x27;s Law: If a shatterable business card is introduced in Act I, it will be sat upon and shattered by Act III.

Wellington Ma&#x27;s business card was a rectangular slice of pink synthetic quartz, laser-engraved with his name, &#x27;The Ma-Mariano Agency,&#x27; an address on Beverly Boulevard, and all kinds of numbers and e-mail addresses. It arrived by GlobEx in its own little gray suede envelope while Rydell was still in the hospital.&quot;Looks like you could cut yourself on it,&quot; Rydell said.&quot;You could, many no doubt have,&quot; said Karen Mendelsohn, &quot;and if you put it in your wallet and sit down, it shatters.&quot;&quot;Then what&#x27;s the point of it?&quot;&quot;You&#x27;re supposed to take very good care of it. You won&#x27;t get another.&quot;

very cool. but I would never plug your card into my machine.. Especially if it&#x27;s a work machine.Perhaps if I have a dedicated sandboxed machine. Is that setup common for embedded folks?

wow, 900MHZ CPU and 32MB was my first PC I bought more than 20 years ago for more than 1000$

Don’t forget to look at the more detailed companion to this excellent article!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thirtythreeforty.net&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;designing-my-linux-business-card&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thirtythreeforty.net&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;designing-my-...</a>

According to the spec sheet, the CPU supports H264 decoding at that price. And MJPEG encoding. And has full-fat DACs for audio playback too.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linux-sunxi.org&#x2F;images&#x2F;b&#x2F;ba&#x2F;F1C100s_Datasheet_V1.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linux-sunxi.org&#x2F;images&#x2F;b&#x2F;ba&#x2F;F1C100s_Datasheet_V1.0.p...</a>

Your business card is CRAP!
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk</a>

overheard (year 2045) &quot;can you believe this guy? His business card doesn&#x27;t even run linux! It was one of those retro paper only cards.&quot;

Okay, but... you could have gotten a better email address at least? Random numbers after your name is barely a step up from &quot;at yahoo dot com&quot;

Here is another very similar project with full details;Epaper based Business Card : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulschow.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;epaper-business-card.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulschow.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;epaper-business-card.html</a>

A business card I&#x27;ld pay to get. Also a realization of the futuristic &quot;disposable computer&quot; concept.

I&#x27;m amazed he did this for $3. I&#x27;ve been struggling to get my cheap electronic Christmas ornament under $15. I guess I need to find an alternative toolchai that&#x27;s cheaper

@paxys - Not sure what purpose you&#x27;re referring to. Sure, purchasing them would defeat the purpose of making your own business card, but not the traditional purpose of having a business card that&#x27;s cool &amp; which doesn&#x27;t immediately get tossed in the garbage after you give it out.I imagine these aren&#x27;t for sale, but I&#x27;m just throwing it out there that I would prly buy them if they were.

Buying these would defeat the purpose though.

Hey @rcarmo - So you&#x27;re gonna sell these right? Bc I&#x27;ll take way more than I ever previously thought I would spend on business cards.

Staggering that this $3 &quot;business card&quot; has substantially more computing power than my $6,000 original IBM PC.(Today&#x27;s US dollars.)

I remember installing Coherent from a bunch of 5 1&#x2F;4 inch floppies onto my third computer, a 286 (or perhaps it was onto my fourth computer, a 386 sx).Coherent had a really nice cover on its manual.

Idea for a next project: an fpga that runs Linux, on a business card.

Can you start a company around this? I would love to have one. You may use KickStarter

Great and a cool project.It looks promising for someone to share their personal profile and their Resume.For business, The best part will be to have cards received into the System and transfer them to their CRM or contacts or some other application they use.

Very cool. Back in 2004 I used to have business card-shaped CD-ROMs that booted Tiny Core Linux. They were always eye catching. In fact, one of those was a factor that landed me a job in a small startup in Palo Alto called VMware...

My Business Card Runs Linux