Electronics Microcontrollers 3D Printing Hacking/Making "/>

Meetup Pocket Sign

08 March 2013 at 10:55 pm

Article image for Meetup Pocket Sign

My brother is thinking about going back into the signage business and as he would start up his own company, he’ll need to build himself a network. My favorite way to connect with people and communities these days is Meetup.com - a website that help you host meetings with ease. So - I set out on a mission to help people remember my brother and what his company delivers.

I’ve long wanted to do something with the neat little 1.8” LCD screen I picked up from Adafruit some months back and looking through their site I found that they also have this neat Lipo charger as well as slim, matching batteries. What if I made a small LCD-sign that he could drop in his pocket? I ordered the components and started modeling.

About a week later, the parts arrived and I modified Adafruit’s example file a bit to load images one by one from the SD card beneath the screen. That gave me a simple, but effective slideshow. All my brother needs to do is to to change the contents is to make some BMP images and dump them onto the SD card. Easy!

After a few iterations I came up with this case. The part containing the battery is not the slimmest, but it’s also meant to go inside your shirt pocket. I could have made it slimmer, but then I would have to sacrifice battery time. With it’s 1300mhA battery pack, it lasts 2 hours on one charge and charging it takes a little less than an hour. I could have saved a little space by skipping the proto-board that lies in between the electronics and the battery, but it made mounting things and getting the USB-port right for charging. I might remove that if I do a next iteration.

The part that is visible on the outside of the pocket is much slimmer and it looks like the red and white Meetup.com logo. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get the case right. I learned that by slanting the print 28 degrees while printing, a lot less cleanup was required.

The supports came off really easy and printing the parts like this actually made them much stronger and easier to glue together in the end. I usually use PLA plastic for all my 3D printing, but for this I used ABS since it can be grinded and polished (PLA can’t). Towards the end of the project I didn’t quite get the time required, but it was a fairly polished thing I gave away. It took me 4-5 evenings to make this project and I think it was worth it. I could of course have bought a CD or something from a shop, but this was a personal gift that (as far as I know) nobody has. Much more fun!

Here’s a shot of junior showing off the final sign and if you want to make your own - grab the files on Thingiverse and components from Adafruit.