The artistic impulse is human nature. Sometimes artistic passion spills over into the technical, or perhaps it is the technical inclination that effects the art. Either way, the results can amaze us, make us laugh, or in the very least, admit that, hey, that was cool.
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10 PCBs That Merge Function and Art
To the creators of these pieces — we applaud your effort. You could have chosen a different route. You could have kept your creation all traditional, dry and rectilinear. Instead, form was allowed to stand on equal footing with function. The organic, analog output of human effort shaped these projects into more than just utilitarian green rectangles.
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First board, done in a graffiti street art style, comes from industrial designer Gijs Gieskes in the Netherlands. This is a mini synthesizer circuit. It is is capable of creating some really neat sounds by twiddling all those potentiometers on-board. Just check out that video in the link. The board could have been laid out in the traditional sense, all right angles a no fun, but style like this is definitely going to be more fun while you are getting your Kraftwerk on. Gijs Gieskes has a whole site full of wonderfully weird and cool projects. His site is very much worth checking out. It is a piece of art in itself. He also sells things in his online store. Most of it seeming to be modules for Eurorack Modular Synthesizers.
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Look at this beautiful nixie tube clock designed by user yanzeyuan on Tube Clock Database.
Aside from the artistically done traces, the board also has a short descript_ion of what a nixie tube is and how it works. Often nixie tube clocks will be installed into beautifully worked enclosures of wood and/or brushed metal. In this case, the working bits have been designed and showcased in a way that is unique and as attractive than any transitional nixie clock enclosure.
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Maybe Lincoln has deep personal significance for the author of this board. Maybe it is just an astonishing coincidence that proper functioning requires a likeness of Abraham Lincoln etched into the ground plane. Very little info is available about this board. It was posted one night long ago in Adafruit's "ask an engineer" chat way back in the year 2010. So, who made it and why seem lost to the past. In the very least, it is a cool example of PCB art.
This here is another mini synthesizer circuit but is has a different style of interface.
Each skull is a key of the synth. The pitch of the oscillators is controlled by the level of skin contact. In fact, one of the tips on using this little guy is to lick your fingertips before you start playing. It is designed and used by John Richards aka dirty electronics. Dirty electronics has an online store where devices like this mini skull synth can be purchased. I am seeing a trend here, the creativity that creates music so readily spills over into other efforts...like PCB design.
This whimsical sample pf PCB art comes from a fella that calls himself johngineer. This guy makes all kinda-cool things including a super cool cyberpunk watch.
Johngineer doesn't give an explanation as to what this circuit is for. However, he does spend a paragraph or two wondering what future generations will make of it after archeologists dig it up and put it on display. Will this private joke, in silkscreen, throw off future anthropologists or will they ultimately recognize it as the offhand wise-crack that it is.
Check this out. This guy is set up to be an Arduino dev board! It was originally posted my someone named Takumi Funada. However, the original link to the template appears to be broken.
This example comes from “lumen electronic jewelry.” It doesn't just have a cool shape, it is a functioning piece of electronics. The PCB traces out a circuit that blink_s and array of 16 LED’s and charges itself with 12 tiny, on-board solar cells. However, if you can't wait the 30 minutes it takes to charge your accoutrement in sunlight, you can charge it with a micro-USB cable. PCB's can and have been used as jewelry all their own, but in this case, showcasing the circuit within that eye-pleasing shape really sets it apart.
Here is a design from boldport.com. This is the place that developed PCBmodE, software specifically made to assist in designing cool layouts like this. To paraphrase the author of the board, he made the software to create boards that were functional as well as beautiful. This board was designed to be used as an adapter from one header pitch to another two header pitches. It also has some LED’s on it. Hey, just because it is the equivalent of a 1/4 inch to 3.5mm to 2.5mm audio plug adapter doesn’t mean that is can't look cool and have some eye pleasing blink_ing lights.
This is the Pumpkin PCB kit from low voltage labs. Check out the cool graphics on the back. Note the cool pumpkin shape, leaving no doubts as to what this thing is intended to be used with. This board flickers a fat 10mm LED in a way that mimics candle light. Candle light that simply cannot be blown out by vicious October wind. The pumpkin PCB can be placed inside your pumpkin, or carved gourd of choice to light it up from within. Or just use it freestyle as a decoration. For 6 dollars American, you can get your own. Just click that link underneath the image.
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This board is neat to look at. A development board for one of the XILINX Spartan-3E family of FPGAs, the board is called the "substrate girl Shinkawa Saki” AZPR EvBoard and is part of a kit to introduce and teach FPGAs. This board was designed with the intent of drawing the graphic with the traces and ground plane instead of a silk-screened design or imparting a shape to the board itself. From what I can understand, Substrate Girl has become somewhat of a viral sensation in the embedded community. For the record… it was the inspiration for this roundup!
