An Animated Business Card That Recipients Will Actually Keep
Tired of watching people throw away your business cards when they think you aren’t looking?
Can we all be honest with ourselves for a moment? In today’s world, business cards are a waste of time, money, and valuable wallet real estate. If you hand someone a business card at a conference, there is an approximately 100% chance that they will throw it away as soon as they’re out of your line of sight. So, how can you help people remember you and your enticing services? River Wang’s solution was to build this delightful “CardTuber” animated business card that recipients will actually want to keep.
This is a business card in the sense that it is in the familiar form factor (width and height) and its purpose is to convey professional contact information. But instead of flimsy cardstock and embossed faux-calligraphy, it is a slab of PCB that displays an animated avatar. That is an illustrated representation of the owner and its mouth moves along with theirs, thanks to a built-in microphone. And the front surface of the card is a capacitive touchpad. Swiping a finger across that will cause the display to switch to a QR code that new acquaintances can scan to find the user’s socials.
Of course, if we’re being realistic, it is unlikely that River will hand these business cards out. They take too much time and money to build. That’s why River designed CardTuber to double as a maker badge, which they can wear on a lanyard at events. The QR code swipe function is particularly useful when this is worn as a badge.
River created an online IDE for Adafruit’s CircuitPython, so it is only natural that they chose a CircuitPython-compatible development board for this project. That is a Seeed Studio XIAO nRF52840, which is very compact. It drives a monochrome 1.3” Sharp Memory Display from Adafruit, which is far more power-efficient than a conventional LCD. Power comes from a small 2302 coin cell battery. And, finally, the touchpad is part of the PCB that makes up the body of the business card.
We can’t promise that CardTuber will land you that big contract, but we are confident in saying that it will be far more memorable than a regular old business card that the recipient will forget before it even finishes settling in the garbage can.