Flexible Arduino is flexible

Arduino
Flexible Arduino is flexible
seeduino_film.jpg
seeduino_film_back.jpg

The folks over at Seeed Studio have been experimenting with building an Arduino-compatible board on flexible printed circuit (FPC) material. Flexible circuit boards are similar to regular circuit boards in that they consist of layers of copper that have an insulator stuck between them. The difference is that the insulating material is flexible, which allows the whole thing to be twisted or bent into a new shape. This might sound exotic, however the technique is used in many commercial products to save space and presumably reduce cost.

The prototype Seeeduino Film isn’t yet for sale, but they are planning to send some units to lucky commenters who come up with an interesting use for them.

22 thoughts on “Flexible Arduino is flexible

  1. Kaplan says:

    This would curve nicely around the inside of a cap and the USB access would allow the user to upload custom messages to the EEPROM.
    Just add an LED grid to the front of the cap and you have user customizable, scrolling, head height, signage.

  2. jasonrkramer says:

    what a great seeduino! i love to build this into a collar for our dog that would send an alert when we’re not home that he’s barking, presumably at an intruder. it would have a contact mic that when reads above a set threshold would send a message, wirelessly, to a local computer that would in turn send an email to whomever….

  3. soundcyst says:

    taking kaplan’s idea one step further, a flexible lilipad version seems insanely useful for soft circuits.

    especially if you can turn all of the expansion pins into ribbon-style connectors (like it looks like are already there on the side opposite the USB port).

    it could also be a cool usb-drive-bracelet kind of thing for hackers.. http://www.ipromo.com/?fuseaction=product.&productsid=106

    arduino in a bracelet!

  4. Steven Viola says:

    I think this would be the perfect solution for making wrist watches, and using as much surface mount devices as possible would really reduce the size of a diy watch.

    I’m sure people would make unique watches, for example, a binary watch like one on think geek http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/6a17/

    or

    a Nixie watch like Steve Wozniak has http://gizmodo.com/260237/woz-explains-his-sporting-of-two-of-the-geekiest-watches-ever-created.

    I always wanted a nixie wrist watch, maybe this is my excuse to make one

  5. Simon says:

    Something like that would work well in a pair of goggles (for some reason I keep thinking old flying goggles) for an idea I have for a system that projects cues onto the lenses in front of your eyes showing you where to look in the sky for orbiting satellites. A kind of augmented reality thing.

    1. soundcyst says:

      ski goggles!

      with a camera and datalogger inside!

  6. Kaplan says:

    A flag with embedded LEDS and this device plus some POV hardware and code would make an interesting addition to a bike or to take to the big game.

  7. Alan says:

    How about waterproofing it, then gluing it to the inside of a low-volume dive mask to project data on depth, time, and remaining air from sensors elsewhere on the diver?

  8. chaos1ao says:

    I could see this used to make a smaller and much more flexible base for a robotic system. Even with the Ardweeny you have a rigid portion that is used to support the controller. With this you could have motors/servos attached by flexible media to allow new movements to be explored. Also this flexible frame would allow compacting of the controller into a small dome or the like. Caterpillar bot, snake bot, bubble bot, need I go on?

  9. mpinner says:

    Im working with musicians and dancers to control lightning and audio aspects during their performance with wearables. I’d love to strap one of these to the wrist/glove of a drummer/DJ and add an accelerometer and transmitter.

  10. Simon says:

    I thought of a more obvious use for myself (am I allowed to comment twice?). Something I am already using an Arduino for. I have a puppet I am working on. An RSS news feed/email reading (using text-to-speech with a British accent), eye moving, mouth flapping, John Steed Thunderbird puppet to give it it’s full name. He stands about 500mm tall. This would fit perfectly into his chest cavity to drive the eye servo and the solenoid for the mouth. Until now I have had the Arduino external with wires running into his head.

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