The original FLIP Card was designed by a designer out of New York, and featured on Adafruit's website. It was open source, and looked really cool, so I decided I'd take it on as a project to better learn electronics (and the process of ordering custom PCBs).
The idea behind it is that it's a business card form factor device with a grid of charlieplexed LEDs controlled by an RP2350 and an accelerometer that run a fluid implicit particle simulation (hence the name FLIP). As you move the card around the LEDs light up as though they're a fluid moving around on the card. It's a neat effect, and akin to a digital fidget spinner.
Hardware
The hardware for this project is pretty basic, but also particularly powerful.
- RP2350 MCU
- Accelerometer
- 21 x 21 grid of charlieplexed LEDs
- Card edge USB-C connector (for data and power)
Software
The original software for this is a rust application that runs the particle simulation. I did create an alternative version of the firmware that prints a void mantis glyph on the LED array, before cycling through W-R-E-W glyphs one by one.