If you want to make circuits for a living, what better way to impress a future employer than to hand them a piece of your work to take home? But even if you’re just hacking for fun, you can still turn your calling into your calling card.

We are inviting you to submit your coolest business card hacks for us all to admire, and the top three entries will win a $150 DigiKey shopping spree.  If your work can fit on a business card, create a project page for it over on Hackaday.io and enter it in the 2024 Business Card Contest. Share your tiny hacks!

To enter, create a project for your hacked business card over at Hackaday IO, and then enter it into the 2024 Business Card Challenge by selecting the pulldown on the left. It’s that easy.

Honorable Mentions

Since we always get more fantastic submissions than we have prizes, we love to recognize entries that stand out. These Honorable Mention categories to highlight those who rise to the challenge.

• Wafer Thin: A “normal” business card is about 1 mm thick. That’s a tough ask for a fully functional project, but let’s just say that for this category, there’s no such thing as too thin. Let’s see what you can do.
• Aesthetics: This category is for you artists out there. Squeeze the most beauty possible into a business card form factor.
• Madman Muntz: Paper business cards are insanely cheap to produce – custom electronics projects, not so much. But clever component choice and corner cutting can go a long way. For this category, we’d like to see how inexpensively you can get your cards made.
• Fun and Games: Nothing says “work” like a business card. Flip the script with a business card that’s a toy at heart.
• Utilitarian: Can you actually get something useful done within the size limits? How much functionality can you fit in your wallet?

More Inspiration

Need some inspiration? Check out these business card projects on Hackaday.

Maybe one of the first business card hacks that we ever featured was Hackaday alum [Ian Lesnet]’s How-To: Web Server On A Business Card. This one’s probably a history lesson today, because it was done in the days of slow microcontrollers with no inbuilt WiFi. Check out that Ethernet dongle attachment!

Flashing forward to the present, [Ryan Chan] designed a business card that, in addition to his contact information, also has a complete Tic-Tac-Toe game built in. [Beast Devices]’s smart business cards do away with the battery entirely by drawing their power from NFC, and are probably eminently hackable too, thanks to those sweet test points for programming.

[Ian Lesnet]’s Webserver

[Beast Devices]’s cards harvest their power from your cellphone

[Michael Teeuw] ‘s card plays Tetris, sideways.

[Michael Teeuw] designed these PCBs that sport small OLED screens to display contact info and even have a hidden easter egg. [Alex.puffer]’s card is classy and simple, and nobody out there needs to ask if he could have done it simply with a 555 timer.

Now it’s your turn. Head on over to Hackaday.io put your business card in the running. The contest runs between Tuesday, May 7, 2024 09:00 am PDT and Tuesday, July 2, 2024 09:00 am PDT, so get going.

Thanks again to DigiKey for sponsoring this contest with the $150 prizes!