• This, but it’s a Meshtastic board powered by photovoltaic fletching so I can fire them high into trees to create a rogue comms network

      • I should probably read into them before the world goes belly up. At the moment, I’m only somewhat knowledgeable about ESP and Arduino.

        • It’s easy. Just get a nrf based device like the lil go echo and you are set.

          You can flash all variants of Lora network software and it has a built-in rink display if you need to read messages without a phone and also battery and charging.

              • No worries. I’m too busy with other stuff anyway. ESP32 I use all the time and they’re fine but hungry. I would like to create a battery operated sensor. But that is, I guess, out of the question for the ESP.

    • let me help you rethink your design. the arrowhead is going to take too hard an impact for pcb. you want to put all that in the shaft near the fletching so you don’t have to run as much wire.

  • The funny thing is that that board is actually designed to be arrowhead-shaped, not just a shard sawn off a larger PCB. I wonder what it came from (assuming it’s real)?

    • 2 days

      “This hunting trip is brought to you by our sponsor, PCBWay.”

      • “Our favorite thing about PCBWay has to be their shared projects. This week we’d like to highlight the one about using old cat6 for trapping and the best places to scavenge for it”

    • I noticed the same thing. Maybe it’s AI. I don’t see any inputs or power source and there’s no indication that there’s anything big enough on the other side to be either.

      • Could be a car key fob maybe? CR2032 and buttons could fit on the backside

        • Maybe, but it would be huge. Most key fobs I’ve seen don’t need mounting screws either. I’m not sure about the battery holder, but any buttons on the other side would likely run through the pcb. I don’t think contact solder would be strong enough for repeated use. There would also be traces somewhere that come from the other side to the controller.

          • I don’t see any merging traces or other aspects of it that don’t make sense when looking at the board holistically, so I don’t think it’s AI. Edit: another commenter pointed out two “pin 1” marks on the biggest chip, so never mind, it’s AI. Fuck.

            With two microchips with that many pins (maybe a 4+ layer PCB?), it looks too complicated to be a key fob. It also has what looks like a 5-pin header for programming.

    • It does look close to PCBs you’d see in random key fobs but I think solid chance it’s a prop (or AI). If you look close and of course we do only see one side but a lot of the things you’d expect to see are missing. What could this do, how does it interact or connect to things, whats up with those traces and why are they going there, who made this and why is nothing labeled? None of that is definitive, but it’s weird to have that many questions like those on a real PCB.

    • Perhaps a board from some form of drone that fits in the nose cone?

      Edit: Never mind, saw the comment about the #1 pin.

  • That would be good news though. Either electronics got cheap again (enough to be used as arrowheads) or we’ve taken the chips back from the evil megacorps that are hoarding them.

  • I want to see someone knap an arrowhead from the fancy fighter jet sapphire cockpit winshield

  • “Where do you see yourself in fiver years?”

    “Retired early or in an unmarked grave. Those are the only two options.”

  • This is terrible. Those board components have terrible aerodynamics. You should scrape those off to improve the flight profile for the arrow