We may love our gadgets, but many of us still require old-fashioned pen and paper for certain tasks. At the very least, it’s useful to have a stack of Post-Its on your desk for important notes or reminders. Up until now, there’s been no viable replacement for those beloved sticky notes.<\/p>\n
But now, Microsoft may have come up with an alternative. Their research team has created what they’re calling a “situated display<\/a>.” Essentially, it’s a small screen — about the size of the stickynotes we’re used to — that you can move around and stick to surfaces like your desk or computer monitor. It has an ePaper display (like the kind you’d see on an e-reader) and uses solar cells to generate energy. The solar component is particularly exciting, as they can use both indoor and outdoor lighting to generate energy — thus eliminating the need for charging.<\/p>\n And what’s underneath that ePaper? A prototype PCB, of course!<\/p>\n Yes, this is just one of the countless modern devices that depends on circuit board prototyping.<\/p>\n The Microsoft research team reports that they mounted the e-Paper film to a prototype circuit board to create the display screen. Prototype printed circuit boards are used in virtually any electronic device, and these prototype PCBs<\/a> are responsible for defining the pixels shown through the display.<\/p>\n What’s shown on the display is updated via another device (which undoubtedly also contains printed circuit boards), like a smartphone or tablet. The display can change depending on the type of information you want shown: weather, sports scores, stocks, a timer, or the types of personal reminders we’ve always written down on sticky notes.<\/p>\n Though the display resolution is fairly low-quality, it has the potential for further advancement. The creators of this situated display prototype have noted that, despite its simple concept, there’s nothing else like this currently on the market.<\/p>\n With so many new potential applications discovered every week, it’s easy to see why annual U.S. revenue for circuit board and electronic component manufacturing reached around $43.3 billion in 2013. Prototype PCBs are an essential component of inventions like these.<\/p>\n Though these displays are still in their infancy, it will be interesting to see whether consumers embrace the idea (especially if they don’t represent a large expense for customers), or whether they’ll stick with tradition. After all, many people predicted e-readers would replace books by now, and that still hasn’t come to pass.<\/p>\n Even so, as the technology continues to grow, we’ll be keeping a watchful eye on these situated displays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We may love our gadgets, but many of us still require old-fashioned pen and paper for certain tasks. At the very least, it’s useful to have a stack of Post-Its on your desk for important notes or reminders. Up until now, there’s been no viable replacement for those beloved sticky notes. But now, Microsoft may Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-pcbunlimited","post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcbunlimited.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}