[HN Gopher] How to mail an SD card with gummy glue
___________________________________________________________________
How to mail an SD card with gummy glue
Author : zkirill
Score : 97 points
Date : 2024-07-12 12:50 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (flyingcarcomputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (flyingcarcomputer.com)
| jiehong wrote:
| I would have just used some sticky tape, but what do I know.
| zkirill wrote:
| What about residue?
| jiehong wrote:
| There are thousands of sticky tapes, some designed to have no
| residue.
|
| Here is one I've found for example [0], although a double
| sided one might "look more professional".
|
| [0]: https://www.mcmaster.com/product/1756N101
| zkirill wrote:
| Cool find, thanks! If gummy glue fails or is hard to source
| then I will definitely try this.
| eighthourblink wrote:
| When i ship out collector / trading cards, common
| practice is to tape the card in between 2 slabs of
| cardboard to prevent bending (this ofcourse being inside
| of a sleeve / top loader plastic liner). Usually the
| protective case is taped to the cardboard with blue
| painter tape. It doesnt leave residue behind on the
| cardboard nor the plastic holder
| philsnow wrote:
| I have bought ink-on-calfskin art and had it shipped to
| me, the artist wrapped it in parchment paper and taped
| the parchment envelope to the inside of a cardboard
| sandwich.
|
| But for SD cards, I would expect affixing it to the
| inside of a cardboard sandwich with masking / painter's
| tape to be perfectly adequate, though not by any means
| pretty.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Painters tape.
| metadat wrote:
| Good idea, the microSD cards could be easily be affixed to
| the invoice / instructions sheet with a square of blue
| painters tape.
|
| I wouldn't fault a manufacturer / vendor for doing this.
| Sure, it's not "wow", but exceedingly practical which is
| commendable.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| I googled and saw gummy glue is used to stick credit cards to
| paper. That led me to think it's a great choice for this.
| crawfishphase wrote:
| its sometimes called booger glue or snot glue. Apple uses cut
| flaps to hold their sim tools without the need for chemical
| glue. same concept will work fine here. I buy all my sd cards
| directly from a manufacturers site, only from the
| manufacturer, such as samsung or westerndigital dot com,
| avoiding any affiliate or 3rd party vendors that can sneak
| onto sites like which do on the apple store. 0 fake cards
| this way
| robocat wrote:
| I thought sticky tape had the risk of creating high voltage
| static - not the best for electronics. Related:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence
|
| Edit: I couldn't find a good video but skip to 4 minutes in
| this is perhaps relevant:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQBjRF9mX1Y Cheesy cheesy video
| but kinda sciency.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Someone once related a story from working in a 3M factory
| that made tape dispensers from bulk tape in the factory. The
| rolling machines to unroll the tape from the bulk rolls
| generated so much static electricity that walking through the
| aisle underneath would make your hair stand on end.
| temp0826 wrote:
| It was a bit stronger than just affecting hair-
|
| http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html
| _joel wrote:
| Isn't that solved using kapton tape?
| ianburrell wrote:
| Why not put in a plastic ziploc bag? Lots of stuff from Amazon
| comes in plastic bags. I got a pack of 2x3" recently, that size
| would be perfect for this.
|
| I bet it is enough not to move around in the envelope. I guess
| there are anti-static bags if paranoid.
| NikkiA wrote:
| > Nowadays, SD cards come in three physical sizes. The size that
| I need has the smallest format called microSD
|
| 4, and NanoSD is the smallest, although the size difference isn't
| as big as between the other 3
| zkirill wrote:
| Looks like it's a similar standard by Huawei. [1] Very cool. I
| can see this being useful for tablets that have the SIM port
| but lack the cellular module. Wonder if this would ever make
| sense on an SBC.
|
| [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/what-is-nano-
| memory-968723/
| duskwuff wrote:
| Note that "Nano Memory" is (or was?) a Huawei proprietary
| format - it is _not_ part of the SD standard.
| russdill wrote:
| Right, its a Huawei standard, not an SD association standard
| so for the purposes of marketing and sales and pedantic
| people, not a "SD card".
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| If you're gonna count Nano Memory you might as well throw in
| Sony Memory Stick
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Can we count Olympus's xD-Picture format, too?
|
| How about the 8-megabyte Cisco-branded PCMCIA flash card I've
| got around here somewhere?
| whycome wrote:
| I mean microSD was "transflash" by SanDisk before being
| adopted by the consortium.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Sure but you wouldn't call it an SD card before that point.
| nalzok wrote:
| > I began my research by looking for some kind of hard plastic
| case. While these are common for standard SD cards, they are
| quite rare for microSD.
|
| What about putting the microSD into an adapter [1] first? I
| imagine you can find a much better deal when ordering in bulk.
|
| [1]: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-microSD-Memory-Adapter-
| MICROS...
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Every micro SD card I've bought came with an Adapter. I have a
| box full of those.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Bought a SanDisk microSD card recently. Came in a nice little
| transparent plastic case... but with no adapter!
| Fnoord wrote:
| I bought ten small microSD cards, 32 GB, for 3 EUR each.
| Very likely they're counterfeits. But they did come in a
| small plastic case. You could reuse these for mail. They
| also all come with an adapter. I have tons of these
| adapters, usually throw them away.
|
| As for the article, it mentions:
|
| > It is normally recommended to use bubble wrap to protect
| SD cards in transit, but I have never seen bubble wrap
| inside a normal envelope which made me suspect that this
| would elevate the rate of delivery failure.
|
| Bubble wrap envelopes exist, obviously. The envelopes are a
| bit larger but would work. When I order small items from
| Ali, this is often the packaging they used.
| stavros wrote:
| I don't understand why they sell them as counterfeits. I
| just want 3 EUR cards, I'm not fussed about the size
| (they're for things that need a few MB, usually).
| However, nobody will sell me cheap cards, unless they're
| counterfeits that claim to be 32 GB but are actually 16
| GB instead.
|
| I would have been happy with 8 GB!
| dspillett wrote:
| You _can_ get "genuine no-name" cards at that sort of
| price, though I can 't testify to the long-term
| reliability. Some that I have on use are
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09YGV2JGP/ which are
| PS2.50 each if you get the 10x 16GB option. I got a
| 5-pack a larger version for a Thing a short while back
| and the ones I've used thus far fully checked out to
| support the claimed storage (I don't trust cheap SD cards
| without verifying, because of the counterfeit issue and
| quality issues, so ran a full test on each) and have so
| far maintained reasonable performance.
|
| That is why there aren't genuine smaller cards: there
| just isn't a large market for them because the parts
| availability means the smaller capacity cards wouldn't
| work out any cheaper to source, so any noticeable drop in
| price would be through the seller reducing their markup.
| For the same price, people will buy the larger ones for
| the same price just-in-case they need more space later
| because why not? Even if there is a small price
| difference, if 8Gb or less is pennies cheaper than 16Gb
| or more, people will generally go for the larger option.
|
| So to "why sell counterfeits?": the scammy sellers can't
| sell them honestly in enough quantity to be worth
| bothering, so they lie.
| stavros wrote:
| This is very helpful, thanks!
| Fnoord wrote:
| If you only need a few MB anyway I can recommend getting
| industrial grade (aMLC / SLC cards) from Digikey (Mouser
| probably has them as well).
| stavros wrote:
| That's a good idea, thanks!
| grishka wrote:
| I've definitely bought some that came without adapters.
| irjustin wrote:
| He's not saying that literally every one comes with an
| adapter, just the ones he bought.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Or just get a proper microsd case. 17 cents a piece here:
|
| https://abra-electronics.com/robotics-embedded-electronics/r...
| ramses0 wrote:
| Complicators gloves. CriCut some card stock to have an SD-card
| shape and stick some post-it paper over both sides. "Lift to
| Experience"
| crawfishphase wrote:
| You can do it without tape if the correct sized corner or edge
| flaps are cut into the card stock. Think "apple sim tool
| unboxing card stock flaps". could cut some cool design also or
| note that professional vinyl cutting shops have expanded so
| they can print and cut same time on cardstock to make a cool
| card- super cheap and likely with near-on-demand turnaround
| pimlottc wrote:
| > Complicators gloves.
|
| Er, what?
| imchillyb wrote:
| Complicators gloves are a tongue-in-cheek reference to making
| problems for solutions instead of the other way around. The
| specific reference to the gloves, were from a, way back,
| article.
|
| A person was riding their bicycle and had cold hands, as they
| rode with cold hands they pondered why no one had ever
| created heated grips for bicycles. They reach out to others,
| and a project begins. The momentum builds until someone
| mentions to the group that no one had done this because
| gloves were a perfectly viable solution to cold hands.
| Gloves.
|
| > https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_complicator_0x27_s_glo
| v...
| karlgkk wrote:
| Ah, typical short sightedness.
|
| Heated grips are reasonably common... on motorcycles.
| echoangle wrote:
| But only in addition to gloves right? You probably don't
| need that on bikes because gloves are enough at the speed
| you normally ride a bike at. You only need heated grips
| on motorcycles because you are sometimes going very fast
| and gloves are too cold, right? I have never ridden a
| motorcycle but that's what I imagine it's like, correct
| me if I'm wrong.
| zrobotics wrote:
| I've never had a bike with heated grips, they seem a bit
| silly to me. When I ride in cold weather, I wear thick
| leather gloves that block a lot of the wind, I don't know
| how much heated grips would help through thick gloves.
| For super cold weather, I have a set of electrically
| heated gloves that do an excellent glove, they're
| marketed at snowmobile riders
| lencastre wrote:
| Like the blower aimed at the conveyor belt to blow the
| empty tube paste boxes away?
| ramses0 wrote:
| The opposite. Complicators gloves would be to use a solar
| powered fan to make electricity that drives a robot arm
| which uses a raspberry pi driving a computer vision
| controlled arm which is plucking individual boxes and
| folding them neatly into a waiting robot retrieval and
| delivery bot.
|
| The "uncomplicator" responds with "just blow them off
| with a fan".
|
| Be the uncomplictaor.
|
| _edit_: actually I'm the 2nd degree complicator compared
| to crafish's reply, which is just "cut four rounded slots
| with an x-acto", no adhesive necessary.
|
| 2nd edit: two diagonal slots, one for each corner. Be the
| uncomplicator.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| one slot. stick it through, lay it flat.
| pjc50 wrote:
| These days, Deliveroo/JustEat cyclists have got a sort of
| big glove that attaches to the _handlebars_ , kind of
| combining these ideas. Hands are warm when cycling (very
| important in the UK) but they don't have to remove the
| gloves to operate phones or open their bags and do the
| actual delivery.
|
| I think the search term is "handlebar mitts".
| bradyd wrote:
| I've also seen them called pogies.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Interesting, I appreciate the term drop, that may be what
| I'm looking for.
|
| I've considered fabricating some sort of handlebar
| shields for my ATV when I need to be out in the winter
| when it's raining (I work in agriculture in Eastern
| Oregon) because it seems that gloves that can handle both
| wind, cold _and_ wet just don't exist.
|
| Often "waterproof" gloves simply aren't or have a non-
| waterproof area on the back/wrist that gets soaked when
| rain flows down my vinyl jacket leaves.
|
| What I currently use, extra large heavy duty kitchen
| gloves over smaller insulated gloves, with vinyl jacket
| sleeves going over the combination, tends to poorly
| retain heat in wind, especially while riding. An upside
| of just using a kitchen glove layer, is they are easy and
| cheap to have spares ready when they get muddy, or break.
|
| Heated handlebars sounds nice actually, though that
| wouldn't be a fully fix to the wind problem.
|
| I'd also love see some sort of jacket made of shingled
| layers of vinyl that allows for breathability when it's
| warmer. (Perhaps use some sort of spacing between
| shingles to foil capillary action) Gor-Tex style jackets
| are worthless if you are sweating while it's raining, may
| as well just use vinyl and get just as sweat soaked while
| having a cheaper jacket that lasts longer under damaging
| conditions.
|
| Winter/rain gear seems intended for people in snow or
| just standing around.
| fragmede wrote:
| https://www.hippohands.com/
| shlant wrote:
| why not just type that exact quote into google? it's the
| first link
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| The whole project itself seems like "complicators gloves" to be
| honest... Just buy something like a RasPi and be done with it
| (and it if even comes with WiFi and Bluetooth _which you can
| disable_ ).
| geerlingguy wrote:
| You could even base it on the Compute Module 4, which can be
| bought in variants without the physical WiFi/BT hardware, if
| you don't trust the hardware overlay disabling the hardware.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I would ship the micro SD in a micro to full sized adaptor. You
| get protection and the customer gets an adapter if they don't
| already have one. Easier to apply the glue as well.
| metadat wrote:
| Author: Why must a physical SD card be mailed? Is it infeasible
| to provide a download link and instructions on how to use Rufus /
| dd / tool-of-choice to create the appropriately formatted card?
|
| Mailing SD cards in their final form in a regular envelope is not
| secure. An adversary can intercept and reformat, and folks will
| be none the wiser unless you provide some kind of tedious 3rd
| party integrity-check tool. I realize this is probably unlikely,
| but still, like.. why?
|
| Flashing from a reliable source is the gold standard.
| Jerrrrrrry wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
| tjohns wrote:
| And just how are you delivering the key material for your
| one-time pad?
| shermantanktop wrote:
| It's OTPs all the way down.
| Jerrrrrrry wrote:
| Doesn't matter. Literally, could be entangled quantum
| photo-carrier pigeons. x [?] y = z z
| [?] x = y y [?] z = x
|
| Assuming another Out-of-Bound communication channel, all
| communication channels are provably safe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad#Perfect_secrecy
| echoangle wrote:
| If you have the Out-of-Band communication channel to
| transmit your OTP (which has to have the same size as the
| data itself), you can just transmit the data using this
| method and skip the other channel.
| teddyh wrote:
| True, but you might have a secure OOB channel _for a
| limited time_. In that case, you can transfer an
| arbitrarily large OTP over the secure channel, to be used
| later, in small pieces, when you do not have a secure
| channel available.
| zkirill wrote:
| It's tricky because the kind of buyer I have in mind would feel
| uncomfortable with that operation despite having the best
| instructions. It would lead them to pass on this product at
| this stage thereby ruining my market validation.
|
| I want to make the experience as seamless as possible given the
| constraints, and popping the SD card in the slot is the best I
| came up with so far.
|
| Having said that, the comment by tjohns below made me rethink
| some things. I may end up providing both the download link, and
| also mail the SD card.
|
| > Mailing SD cards in their final form in a regular envelope is
| not secure. An adversary could intercept and reformat, and it'd
| be tough to tell. I realize this is unlikely, but still, I'm
| like.. why?
|
| I agree. It's a poor medium for many different reasons.
| However, if I can sell these, then I can sunset them and start
| working on the actual electronic device, which will house the
| OS and software on eMMC or SSD.
| jmholla wrote:
| I'd recommend including instructions in the email on how they
| can verify the SD card is loaded with the correct data.
| (e.g., `dd | sha256sum == curl | sha256sum`). This, I think
| would give you the best of both worlds. (Those are shell
| pipes (`|`) in my example.)
| petsfed wrote:
| I think your starting assumption (that your target audience
| _will_ be turned off by having to download an image and
| format an SD card but _will not_ be turned off by plugging
| said SD card into an _unenclosed dev board_ ) is faulty, but
| I suppose your market validation test will suss that out.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| They explained it in the previous post they linked:
| https://flyingcarcomputer.com/posts/how-to-validate-market-w...
|
| Long story, short: customers can just stick in the device,
| without having to figure out how to image an SD card.
| michaelt wrote:
| The author is working on "a new type of personal computer. No
| AI. No cloud. No distractions. Just your thoughts."
|
| I suspect what the author initially hoped to make was a
| physical offline consumer device, like a classic TomTom or a
| ReMarkable. But then they seem to have noticed that's not a
| one-person job, so they've reduced their scope to selling an SD
| card that plugs into an off-the-shelf Olimex dev board. Mailing
| the SD card is them keeping their dream of being a physical
| hardware business alive.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| SD cards can be set permanently read only[1]. A malicious party
| could still swap it with a different SD card though, but that's
| true of any media.
|
| [1]: https://hackaday.com/2013/11/12/keep-your-sd-cards-data-
| safe...
| somat wrote:
| Like the article said counterfeit items always worry me. I wish
| more companies sold directly to the end user.
|
| I mean, I understand why they don't like to do this, dealing with
| the end user is a huge pain, it is much easier to deal with the
| distributors and have them deal with the end user. So barring
| direct sales I wish supply chain auditing was easier for for us
| end users. the best you tend to get is a "distributers" link on
| the manufacturers website, most of whom are b2b only distribution
| that are not happy selling low volume directly to you ether.
| bityard wrote:
| I guess you can just buy from a reputable electronics
| distributor such as Mouser or Digikey. They have to keep their
| supply chains clean due to having larger customers that would
| abandon them in a heartbeat if they did not.
|
| Yes, you will pay more for an SD card from one of these places
| than on Amazon. But not insanely so. That is the price of
| assurance.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Until someone poisons the well by returning "unused"
| counterfeit cards to places like Digikey, anyway. It's dirty
| and rotten and illegal to convert fake cards into genuine
| cards like this, but criminals are gonna criminal.
|
| (My own trick is to just buy cards from one of Microcenter's
| house brands. Their buyers know what they're doing
| (Microcenter's flash memory products are both excellent and
| priced right), and nobody is going to bother making
| counterfeits of them due to a lack of broad market appeal.)
| rocketvole wrote:
| I'd be surprised if digikey didn't have checks in place to
| mitigate your concern, for the reasons in the above
| comment. Businesses would leave if they got a hint of
| chicanery.
| buescher wrote:
| Or you can buy in person from Walmart. For the volume he's
| probably doing, that's not as impractical as it might sound.
| rafram wrote:
| Not sure if I really understand what this project is doing. A
| NetBSD distro for (specific) crappy hardware, named after a Peter
| Thiel quote?
| metabagel wrote:
| Which can't play movies, music, or games; and doesn't have WiFi
| or come with a monitor. But, it does have a GUI OS, so it's
| intended to be connected to a display.
| mojosam wrote:
| The oroduct description in the FAQ is entirely based on what it
| doesn't or can't do, but doesn't say anything about what it
| will be able to do, except run an off-the-shelf window manager
| on an off-the-shelf OS. Are any apps going to be available, And
| how do customers install third-party apps without the dreaded
| Cloud?
|
| They are aiming this at someone with:
|
| > a high discretionary budget for personal electronics and
| willingness to pay a premium for novel ideas.
|
| But what are those novel ideas that would justify the "quite
| high" price?
|
| And if I wanted a BSD-based desktop computer with "No AI. No
| Cloud. No Distractions", I would just buy a Mac Mini, not log
| into an Apple ID, disable Siri, out it into Do Not Disturb. And
| Mac OS has never been a "walled garden". So from a customer's
| perspective, why wouldn't this be an easier, cheaper, and
| superior solution?
| justusthane wrote:
| This is not entirely on topic for this post, but I wish the
| website had even a brief paragraph about what this is, or more
| importantly what the vision is.
|
| Even the initial "Q&A" post seems to assume some basic existing
| knowledge of the project.
| bityard wrote:
| I got the impression you have to give them your email address
| to be put on their newsletter mailing list in order to find
| out.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| At least have some selling point? I see that it is supposed
| to be distraction and bloat free, but what would the selling
| point be over say something like Linux?
| SamBam wrote:
| I can't help but think that the idea is very pie-in-the-sky
| at this point, and the author is bike-shedding by thinking
| about how to deliver SD cards before having a product.
|
| This is probably uncharitable. But it would be an
| explanation for the hand-wavy copy.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Yeah it is hard to imagine any person not willing to
| flash the SD themselves to try out an OS like this.
|
| I can imagine building a hobby, niche unique OS and then
| other hobbyists installing it themselves, but not what OP
| is seemingly trying to do.
|
| He is spending time trying to figure out how to send an
| microSD and all the regulations of selling an electronic
| device instead of simply building the OS. It seems quite
| backwards to me.
|
| Based on the articles it seems like he has been spending
| months on this. I don't know... just build the OS and
| develop selling points...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| From my own experience some people need this kind of
| backwards thinking to keep working on stuff and not lose
| interest. Not saying it's ideal...
| zkirill wrote:
| The plan is to first figure out how to legally market,
| distribute, and sell this physical thing. It's more difficult
| than I imagined as you can read in my blog. Feedback from
| Hacker News has been invaluable to me during this process. I
| will replace the placeholder website as soon as I can start
| accepting payment.
| bityard wrote:
| But you're still not saying what it is you're selling.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| It's a physical thing! /s
| sulandor wrote:
| genius!
| web007 wrote:
| It's a computer based on BSD, but with no WiFi, no BT, no
| screen, and no ability to play movies or games or music.
| And it's all programmed in C - not C++ or Rust anything
| similarly memory-safe-ish.
|
| So RPi, but more vague and vulnerable and less useful. And
| maybe more expensive?
| justusthane wrote:
| It just seems an odd approach. I'm not that interested in
| reading your engineering blog if I don't know what it is
| you're trying to build.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Rigid PP cases for SD/MicroSD are readily available for pennies
| each.
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006330399282.html
| giantg2 wrote:
| The impression I got from the article is that it's a bit thick
| and they thought it was flimsy based on the reviews (not saying
| they're right, but that was what they thought).
| giantg2 wrote:
| Just use 1mm foam sheet and tape. Seems like that would be
| economical and provide better protection.
| Animats wrote:
| SD card mailers exist.[1] You can even get them custom-printed.
|
| Since all this guy is actually selling is an SD card, he probably
| should get custom SD cards printed with his own logo on the SD
| card itself, packed in his own custom packaging. His marketing
| claim is that this is a premium product, so it needs premium-
| looking packaging. This is cheap from China. The setup fees are
| low.
|
| (I once sold a boxed software product. $4000 for the first custom
| box, $0.25 thereafter, made in Silicon Valley. Visited the
| printing plant and went over the files with their prepress
| person, who had a Mac connected to an offset platemaking machine
| the size of a small car. She said "You want to see the press"? So
| I put in earplugs and went to look at the press, which was about
| a hundred feet long. It was turning out "museum quality" art
| prints at about three prints per second at the time. That shop
| did those as a sideline between box jobs.)
|
| [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Camera-Sd-Card-
| Micro-...
|
| [2] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Custom-5G-Paper-
| SIM-C...
| stevage wrote:
| What are they actually shipping?
| dankwizard wrote:
| Slow news day, huh?
| whycome wrote:
| > Nowadays, SD cards come in three physical sizes.
|
| Wtf. I had no idea there was a 'mini' size between standard and
| micro. Never seen them in the wild.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| It was more common like 15-20 years ago when some cellphones
| required one for internal storage
| gnicholas wrote:
| Kind of like mini-USB, which was briefly popular but quickly
| supplanted by micro-USB. I think my only surviving mini-USB
| device is a bike light battery.
| blahedo wrote:
| My Happy Hacking Keyboard--which I bought comparatively
| recently, maybe 2017 or so--uses a mini-USB connector!
| Really solid piece of hardware, and I guess they just
| didn't see a need to update a design that worked.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I much prefer mini usb over microusb, what a crap
| connector that one is. You look at it wrong you've bent
| the male end and hollowed out the connector.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I have a 3tb external drive that used mini... I'd need to
| find, or buy a new cable if/when I ever try to use it
| again.
| whycome wrote:
| Mini usb is actually more physically robust than the
| thinner microusb. I've never had a mini bend, but many
| micros. And it was much easier to get it right on first
| insert.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| There was a time when I carried some adapters with me so my
| laptop could read different card formats in the field.
|
| My favorite was the was the stack I'd use for MicroSD cards:
|
| MicroSD to Mini SD > MiniSD to regular SD > SD to Compact Flash
| > CompactFlash to PCMCIA/CardBus
|
| This stack of widgets (5, including the card itself) worked
| fine -- it wasn't fast, but fast wasn't a goal. They all nested
| together in a fairly durable form that was the size of one Type
| I PCMCIA device. No wires.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Paper. Origami paper artists would know. Paper with cut slots. A
| paper folded in three. With cut slots. I am sure someone could
| make it. The same slots used to hold iphone sim tray pins.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Why an SD card? It may be more bulky to mail a flash drive, but
| at least it wouldn't get lost inside an envelope...
| rdlw wrote:
| > Flashing the SD card correctly is pretty challenging even for
| me. I can't imagine a customer figuring it out. So I will flash
| it for them!
|
| From the post he links in the first sentence, about "how [he]
| decided to [...] mail SD cards to [his] customers"
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Balena Etcher is hard to use? Seemed pretty braindead to me.
| /shrug
| supertrope wrote:
| A person has to have the mental model of knowing they need
| to use this type of tool, know what specific tools exist,
| and how to operate the tool. If they're missing any one of
| those prerequisites, or they are not familiar with
| executing any part they will get lost. A lot of Windows
| software download websites have predatory fake download
| button ads. Smartphones have reduced the steps needed by
| centralizing software acquisition into app stores, hiding
| files and the file system, and obviating or automating
| housekeeping tasks like updates, anti-virus, restarts, and
| disk defragmentation.
|
| When I bought a PowerMac 30 years ago it came with a
| manual. It assumed zero computer operating knowledge. That
| the mouse had to be slid across a mouse pad, and not
| pressed against the screen.
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Buy an microSD card from Amazon, use the packaging the microSD
| card originally came in [1] - it is a solved problem.
|
| Plenty of scope to add your own branding
|
| [1] https://postimg.cc/Lq8K1MYt
| trm64qog wrote:
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-freeware-detects-fake-...
| It is tiny too! 104K. Lucky all my drives passed.
| amelius wrote:
| I'd use nano tape:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_tape
| hbossy wrote:
| > It is normally recommended to use bubble wrap to protect SD
| cards in transit, but I have never seen bubble wrap inside a
| normal envelope which made me suspect that this would elevate the
| rate of delivery failure.
|
| There are envelopes with bubble wrap lining. All the Chinese
| stores use them and I see them more often than cardboard boxes.
| gravitystorm wrote:
| > I began my research by looking for some kind of hard plastic
| case.
|
| I used to ship micro-sd cards in plastic cases through the mail,
| here in the UK. At first I used standard DL (letter) envelopes,
| since they are cheap and the case inside the envelope didn't push
| it over any depth size limits.
|
| However, when I got two angry support emails for having sent them
| "empty envelopes", I had to ask them for photos, which both
| showed a small sd-card-case sized hole along one short edge, with
| some tell-tale marks. What was happening was the leading edge of
| the envelope was going through some kind of thinly-spaced
| rollers, pushing the case to the rear end of the envelope, and
| then the rollers had such a grip on the envelope that they
| squeezed the sd card out through the corner of the envelope like
| a squeezing a pip out of a lemon.
|
| So I had to move to padded envelopes, which were then a more
| consistent depth over the whole length of the envelope, and so
| they worked fine in the mail machines. But that upgrade ate into
| my margins since I was only working on a small scale.
|
| It's little details like these cause vague statements like "It is
| normally recommended to use bubble wrap to protect SD cards in
| transit" - lessons learned the hard way!
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Why not put them in a plastic bag or Electrostatic bag and then
| tape them to cardboard? That seems like it would solve most of
| the problems cheaply without adding a lot of thickness to the
| envelope?
| mtzaldo wrote:
| He can also used printer paper. Put the card in the middle,
| and fold it to cover the plastic container.
| peddamat wrote:
| It really does seem like a small piece of tape inside the
| envelope would have solved the problem.
| birdman3131 wrote:
| I would look at toploader sleeves from the collectible card
| scene. Thin enough to not trip the 1/4" envelope rule.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I've handled a lot of micro-SD cards.
|
| index card + scotch tape
|
| The easiest way to distribute these was to scotch tape the micro-
| SD to an index card and then write something about the content on
| the index card.
|
| Of course, that's not an option for customers-facing stuff, but
| then you really don't want to be in the business of distributing
| micro-SD cards to customers!
| implements wrote:
| > index card + scotch tape
|
| Tip: If you fold over the index card and join the edges with
| Scotch tape it makes a handy little envelope to store a USB
| stick or SD card in - and you can add some written notes for
| contents, date, etc.
| delichon wrote:
| Do it like banks do. Put a full sized sheet of paper in the
| envelope with anything you need to say on it, with the SD card
| gummied to the appropriate position. It's very well tested and
| I've never had a problem with it.
| jdlshore wrote:
| That's the exact point of the article..?
| karaterobot wrote:
| > The plan is to permanently affix a thicker piece of paper
| somewhere on the letter with regular glue, and then use
| "gummy glue" to temporarily attach the microSD card on top of
| it.
|
| I'm with the person you're responding to. It's not clear from
| this description what he's doing, but it sounds like he's
| gluing paper to something (the envelop itself?) and then
| using gummy glue to attach the card to the thicker piece of
| paper. Credit cards just come attached to a piece of paper
| that is not, itself, attached to anything else. It's not
| obvious to me why he'd do it this way.
| shlant wrote:
| someone's here to give their opinion without reading the post.
| Classic internet
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Why does this require an article?
| masukomi wrote:
| instead of dealing with folding and glue and such you could 3d
| print a custom case that was really thin, but had a wider "frame"
| around it that held it in place in the letter. Could fit a bunch
| on a single print bed, especially if you used those shorter width
| envelopes and got creative with the "frame" shape so that they
| were interleaved on the print bed.
| kazinator wrote:
| I would just use masking tape. It's designed to come off surfaces
| without leaving a residue.
|
| Never write an article promoting some solution, without
| discussing some alternative!
|
| There are possible issues with gummy glue; it can be stubborn in
| adhering to cards. Getting stubborn piece of gummy glue off the
| back of a tiny Micro SD card could be not fun. You don't want to
| require the user to excessively handle the card or put mechanical
| any stress on it. They are thinner and more delicate than credit
| cards (and the bulk of _those_ is just plastic. Only the chip and
| the magnetic stripe are sensitive). Some users could end up
| trying to use a MicroSD with a piece of the gummy glue on it.
|
| I wouldn't want to put anything across the contacts of the SD
| card, which would mean that the adhesive would be on its back.
| But in that case, the contacts stick out of the page, inviting
| damage.
|
| Imagine the user clumsily shaking the letter out of the envelope,
| such that it it fall out, opens, lands with the SD card down, and
| is immediately stepped on by their five-year-old.
|
| If you put it on the paper contacts-down, you can tape over the
| back.
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