> 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...
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.
Not sure if I really understand what this project is doing. A NetBSD distro for (specific) crappy hardware, named after a Peter Thiel quote?
Complicators gloves. CriCut some card stock to have an SD-card shape and stick some post-it paper over both sides. "Lift to Experience"
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!
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.
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.
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...
> 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
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
Rigid PP cases for SD/MicroSD are readily available for pennies each.
I'd use nano tape:
I would look at toploader sleeves from the collectible card scene. Thin enough to not trip the 1/4" envelope rule.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-freeware-detects-fake-... It is tiny too! 104K. Lucky all my drives passed.
I would have just used some sticky tape, but what do I know.
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...
Just use 1mm foam sheet and tape. Seems like that would be economical and provide better protection.
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
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.
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.
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.
What are they actually shipping?
Why does this require an article?
Slow news day, huh?
> 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!