Circuit Scribe began with a goal of lowering the barriers of entry into the electronics and maker community. That idea took first form as a conductive ink pen at the end of 2013. The silver and water based ink was used to make electronics using basic and advanced circuit concepts, with ink that handles up to 36 Volts and 400 milliAmps on photo paper.
The pen's users began to create educational tools, prototyping components, and lots of craft and art applications. The Circuit Scribe team is now back with new DIY kits to make more electronics projects, including a litewing, calculator, and drone.
The new kits require several sets of component tooling and the Kickstarter campaign is intended to secure funding for the tooling. The LiteWing is a simple LED circuit modeled after a maple seed and teaching about basic aerodynamics and electronics. The calculator has a capacitive touch sensor module that lets the user design an interface for the calculator system. The drone is the centerpiece of the campaign and includes four DC motors, a hub / brain / microcontroller, cardboard wings and a smartphone app for flying the completed aircraft. A platform is also being built at sketch.circuitscribe.com (still in beta, the link is not yet live) for all users to post the projects that they've built and share tips and programs.
Circuit Scribe's campaign is interesting to me for a few reasons - they've built this fantastic tool and let it out into the wild for three years, watching all of the things that makers and crafters have been doing with the original pens and electronic kits. Now three very specific new applications are being developed for users, but the same idea and spirit still exist for makers. Different uses can be found for the LiteWing and the calculator can have several different configurations and control layouts. The drone also lends itself to new iterations, with one campaign option being the "Hacker Pack" with one drone to build and one to hack into new forms. The most interesting possibility for me is the pen and ink, though. For every maker drone I've seen there's a story about wire management, flights canceled due to a loose connector, or bare wires touching something and ruining wires or components. If conductive ink can take away wire management issues then there might be a huge new set of applications on the horizon. The campaign ends on June 26 at 12:00am and if successful first units are expected to ship in October 2017.