From the new book Wearable Tech Projects by Sophy Wong comes Pimoroni NFC nail stickers! Light up your manicure with near field electric fields.
Part nail art, part biohack, these NFC nail stickers from Pimoroni are awesomely cyberpunk. Each sticker is a tiny flexible circuit that contains an NFC antenna and a tiny LED; when placed near an NFC signal, the LED lights up. This ultra-compact package, with no battery or exposed wiring, is a perfect fit for nail art!
You can light up the Pimoroni stickers with an Adafruit PN532 RFID/NFC Shield. Paired with an Adafruit Metro or Arduino Uno, you have a compact near field for lighting the nails.
Tinkering with these nail stickers sparked our curiosity about NFC and RFID, and this author really enjoyed hunting down NFC fields while out and about. It was a sci-fi moment every time the LED lit up, and it revealed many invisible electromagnetic fields we pass through every day. While the stickers are a bit of a novelty without the ability to hold or transmit data, their low price and high impact makes it easy and exciting to get started with NFC and wearables.
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