exocortex
960 dry contacts under an ordinary beanie. Build it yourself.
Open hardware, v1. Designed and checked in CAD; not yet built.
Sixteen tiles. Sixty spring-loaded gold contacts each. A shell you print overnight, and a knit beanie over all of it.
Contacts that reach.
A flat board sits farther from the scalp at its corners than at its centre. So the pins come in six lengths, 7.5 to 12.5 mm, each with 1.5 mm of spring travel and a 3 mm gold ball.
Two boards. 2.5 mm apart.
The contact board faces the scalp: a buffer behind every pin and eight ADS131M08 converters. An RP2040 controller mates behind it and streams to the hub over one flat cable.
Made to be made.
Boards ordered assembled from JLCPCB. A shell printed on a hobby printer. Screws, spacers and cables from the hardware store.
Order the boards
Gerbers, pick-and-place and a JLC bill of materials for both boards, with an LCSC part for every line.
Print the shell
Five PETG parts, oriented for the bed: 35 hours on an Ender-3 V3 SE.
Assemble
Pins into nuts, boards onto standoffs, cables into channels, hub and battery into the pod.
Everything to build one.
Where it stands
| part | what it is | state | |
|---|---|---|---|
| EXO-420 controller board | RP2040, flash, crystal, LDO, FPC to the hub. 6-layer, 1.0 mm | routed: 131 traces, 112 vias, 0 DRC errors | ready |
| EXO-410 contact board | 60 ball-pin nuts, 62 followers, 8 × ADS131M08, 4 optical sensors. 6-layer HDI | routing in progress: best run has 4 open nets, no shorts | in progress |
| Shell EXO-140…144 | PETG on an Ender-3 V3 SE | 34/34 design checks pass | printable |
| Ball-pins EXO-5075…5125 | custom gold spring pins, six lengths | CAD and drawings; RFQ drafted | quote needed |
| Hub EXO-430 | reference and bias, clock, 16 tile ports, battery, USB-C and Wi-Fi | circuit and BOM; no layout yet | in design |
| Camera ring | five cameras and microphones, 72° apart around the band | concept only | planned |