You all have been asking for years for this guy’s return–and really, public debut: behold the Apex Mega Spectrum. A 22mm diameter, 1.9mm thick blinky Apex for all of our smartcard needs. There are two varieties available: fast and slow blink. At the moment, all we have are slow blink.
All that blink comes at a price: it’s range is not as good as the module (or the now retired Apex Mega) and you’ll need an advanced installation.
What’s it like compared to the ApexFlex?
Better 
#AnythingButMetric 
Will there also be a flex secure spectrum since it’s basically the same chip?
Yup. I just hadn’t gotten that far yet. They are not quite ready to happen.
Is this single color or rgb? If rgb, will a single color version be possible-without-a-ton-of-work?
Rgb and pretty unlikely.
Ooh, interesting! Good to know in case my OG tester Apex Mega Spectrum ever fails.
Ok, this is pretty cool.
That being said, the rational, anti-consumist voice in my brain whispered a few wise things:
Can someone prove that annoying voice wrong?
Great answer, but help me to unpack it: any difference apart the LED and antenna? Maybe more memory? Any fun test to share?
I mean I could just put another led on, then you need to track stock and such though.
Why would you want that though?
Aesthetic choices are 100% subjective
We take two products and make them 2 + N products because once we start adding colors… Maybe we’ll leave it for custom work?
Sorry but I gotta be the killjoy. For now we will roll with the Apex Mega Spectrum RGB. Custom work for one-offs like this become super time consuming and our time is already fully consumed.
The hard resin encapsulation should mean that the micro-flexes thought to be causing the chip-solder-y connection bit to fail rarely in regular flexes would be completely mitigated, right?
Also, how would this style of implant work for the warranty requirements? I imagine they’re harder to damage during install than a normal polymer flex, is an install video still a requirement for the warranty terms?
Emphasis on should.
Let’s not change it. That’s an unnecessary complication. The resin should still not be handled with metal tools.
I detailed this somewhere in a video a while back, but my current theory is that the problem is not solder related.
By a huge vast almost absolute majority, the passive component we see this problem with is an LED. Capacitors, resistors, SMT chips like the NTAG5 or NTAGI2C do not seem to have a problem, thus it must not be solder related.
The way an SMT LED is constructed involves two “pads” used to solder the component to the PCB, but from these pads we have wirebond wire (thinner than human hair) going from the pad to the internal diode elements. Encasing the diode elements and wirebond connecting wire is an optically clear resin.
Having worked with many resins and polymers, I believe the problem lies in the resin’s inability to bond with any meaningful strength to the pads. Once that weak bond breaks, even a little, a tiny amount of movement between the pad and resin becomes possible. Once that happens, the ultra-thin fragile wirebond wire shears and the LED stops working.
Thus, with no flexing at all in a rigid AMS, the LED should survive for a very long time.
I thought there were a few instances not too long ago of ordinary flexes having the chip revived by soldering it to a new antenna:
I did see the LED video, but loss of LED function is less annoying than loss of chip function (to me)
Also, is repair a possibility for these resin implants in the unlikely event something did happen? Would it be viable to recover the inner-stuff from within the resin, or does it cure and bond to the internals too?
