Tek Syndicate recycled circuit boards coasters?

So on this website called cyberdog.net they have these coasters made of recycled circuit boards. They are sold out at the moment (You can find them under the accessories tab in the home/gifts section) but it would be something cool to see on the epicpants store.

I'm not for sure where you could find a company to make them. I'm assuming they could be cut with a water jet cutter. I know finding old circuit boards isn't hard. But what do you guys think?

Here's a picture if you don't feel like going to the website.

10 Likes

They have to function as a coaster sufficiently well, first and foremost.

Are they reject Circuit boards?
Looked like they haven't been soldered

I would definitely purchase something like this if added to epicpants.

1 Like

maybe I am getting ahead of myself, but I think it would be kind of awesome if they took a circuit board, added some pressure sensors and leds, and then made a coaster which lights up a certain color depending on how full your glass is. Maybe even put in a speaker that plays O Fortuna when it is almost empty.

4 Likes

Not for sure but they definitely look like it.

This. 100%. But let us choose our song. I only use coasters for coffee(have a drink holder for water/tea/powerade/pop) so I'd want it to play something inspiring and powerful. Emeli Sand's Read All About It perhaps, for me, or something out of Dragonforce.

Anyway, easily done. Just integrate a port on the edge that takes either a microSD or a tiny USB dongle, make it large enough to hold a song. :P

1 Like

oh of course, but O Fortuna would be good to ship with as it doesnt have any copyrights on it. But hell, you could even have a button to cycle songs for every type of drink (or even playlist so that you never know what inspirational music will appear.)

Only problem is finding a microSD card large enough to hold more than a few minutes worth of music...

1 Like

Just get a small/cheap one (512 megs maybe.... damn we're so spoiled for storage compared to 10 years ago) and ship it with O Fortuna on it.

That way the customer can customize if they want, to whatever they want.

haha, I still have an SD card with a whoping total of 64 MBytes!!! Hot stuff back in the day xD

1 Like

Yup. If I don't have 2GB to slap into my phone for 10% of my music collection, I get grumpy.

How would you protect the coaster from the drink? How would power be handled?

oh, you can just put it in a glass container or something. Thats more for the design team but I doubt waterproofing it would be difficult.

3D printed clear plastic would probably be cheapest. Rubber port covers for a charge plug and the MicroSD, maybe a button to change songs/modes. Small batter & efficient speaker.

I think we are the design team, my friend.

but this is the tek! We dont go cheap over quality. I want some gold plated microSD ports and everything xD

But I would personally prefer glass as it is more scratch resistent and easier to clean. If the edges could be work with a flesh aluminium frame or with a slight rise to prevent the cup slipping.

Also I would recommend the power jack and SD slot on the bottom with a small trough to run the cable trough for charging (so you can drink at charge at the same time) and a volume and switch button on the side with an audible click to it (hell, why not use a cherry switch, be good for laughs)

Absolutely right. Glass it'll have to be, and I like the idea of a wire trough at the bottom.

Cherry would also be quite amusing, not sure how it'll react to spills, not having owned a Cherry keyboard yet.

I don't know about the aluminium frame. Would it distract from the PCB?

well, I dont think asilicon green pcb would be very attractive. Maybe different styles. I think personally that a white or black painted PCB might make it more customizable (thinking of standoff screw holding the thing together, so you can actually take it apart and build onto it). But maybe have a green varient for the guys and gals who are too old school.
Thinking of aluminium because it is relativly cheap, durable and easy to clean. But maybe it would be a cool idea to have the entire ridge connected by old transistors* (the long black things with the legs on the side)

I might wip out sketch up and see if I can design something... Not very good at it, but will give it a try.

*: remmeber the name: Microcontrollers

@Logan @Wendell You should hire this guy as a designer for EpicPants. He has good ideas.

1 Like

i got ideas, just no way to work them out. But I am the kind of person that puts way too much thought into minor details xD

2 Likes

That's a good thing, not a bad one.

2 Likes

if you are interested, this is what I have so far. Not much, but this is around my 5th itteration. I am going to take a break now, but what you see is LEDs around the edge, cutouts for speakers on two sides, 4 cherry MX switches, 8 holes for pressure sensors and the green area is for the arduino/pi/whatever.
I decided to leave the microSD card inside for aesthetical and simplicity reasons. Still working out where to put the power input.