Adapter board to attach Adafruit 8×8 LED Matrix board as #badgelife add-on (using the DC26 SAO 2×2 pin header)
KiCad design files:
#badgelife add-on adapter for Adafruit 8×8 LED matrix
MicroPython support:
From All the Badges of DEF CON 26 (vol 4)Â on Hackaday:
Hackaday Alum Sarah Petkus has been on a long quest to build an awesome robot with a lot of personality lovingly known as Noodle (check out her Hackaday Supercon talk on the adorable quadruped). For DC26 she decided to throw a con inside the con for Noodle and this is the badge.
Anyone following Sarahâs work knows that her art is on point and here is a great example. Look at the solder mask on front and rear and youâll notice the lettering is mirrored. This gives it the appearance that this is a design you can see through the board. The bold use of patches of silk screen and gold-plated copper deliver her aesthetic boldly and make you just want to stare at the design. There is a little squiggle through the C on the front that is a superb touch! Driven by an ATmega328 and a CR2032, there are 10 LEDs on the back that flash for a backlight effect.
From a cockroach filled with LEDs, to an impressively dense 576 RGB LED display, and even a hunk of carpet, our final installment of the unofficial hardware badges at DEF CON 26 are beyond impressive. I tried to see every badge and speak to every badge maker this year. So far weâve covered a tonâŚ
At Hackaday, weâre constantly impressed by the skill and technique that goes into soldering up some homebrew creations. Weâre not just talking about hand-soldering 80-pin QFNs without a stencil, either: there are people building charlieplexed LED arrays out of bare copper wire, and using Kynar wire for mechanical stability. There are some very, very talented people out there, and they all work in the medium of wire, heat, and flux.
At this yearâs DEF CON, we opened the floodgates to competitive soldering. Along with [Bunny] from Hardware Hacking Village and the many volunteers from the HHV and Soldering Skills Village, dozens competed to solder up a tiny kit full of LEDs and microscopic resistors.
The kit in question was an SMD Challenge Kit put together my MakersBox, and consisted of a small PCB, an SOIC-8 ATtiny, and a LED and resistor for 1206, 0805, 0603, 0402, and 0201 sizes. The contest is done in rounds. Six challengers compete at a time, and everyone is given 35 minutes to complete the kit.
From All the Badges of DEF CON 26 (vol 3) on Hackaday:
E-Paper Badge is a Hint at Great Things to Come
Friend of Hackaday, Drew Fustini, came to our Breakfast at DEF CON meetup sporting a name badge of his own design. The E-Paper Badge uses a Teensy LC to drive a 2.15ⳠE-Paper display. The row of capacitive touch buttons to the left allow the image to be changed, and he just happened to have the Jolly Wrencher in the gallery of choices for this picture.
This badge gets me really excited for this yearâs Open Hardware Summit which is at MIT on September 27th. This yearâs badge is a collaborative effort between a group on Hackaday.io! Itâs basically Drewâs badge on steroids, and he told me the experience of working with a team has been really positive. It seems each time the group hits a hard problem or a pile of work that needs to be done, someone on the team grabs it and runs with it. Itâs a great example of both certified open hardware and team development.
I tried my best to see every badge and speak with every badge maker at DEF CON 26. One thingâs for sure, seeing them all was absolutely impossible this year, but I came close. Check out the great badges shown off in volume 1 and in volume 2 of this series. The game is afootâŚ
From Nisha Kumar:
An overview of the DC503 party badge as seen at DefCon 2018
Hi! My name is Nisha, and I made a party bangle for my friend, Miki, to take with her to DefCon25. It was my first fully-formed electronics project and it posed some interesting challenges due to its unusual form factor. You can read about my experiences with that project here.
Soon after DefCon25, I was approached by r00tkillah to make over a 100 of something similar for the DC503 party at DefCon26. The plan was to combine the power of the BMD-300 SoC by Rigado used in the Wagon Badge from the previous year with my Neopixel bangle form factor. We would call it âThe Bangletâ and it was going to be awesome.
In passive mode, the bangletâs LEDs light up when detecting nearby Bluetooth devices. The number of LEDs that are lit correspond to the number of BT devices detected and their colors are based on each deviceâs mac address.
Last week, tens of thousands of people headed home from Vegas, fresh out of this yearâs DEF CON. This was a great year for DEF CON, especially when it comes to hardware. This was the year independent badges took over, thanks to a small community of people dedicated to creating small-run hardware, puzzles, and PCB art for thousands of conference-goers. This is badgelife, a demoscene of hardware, and this is just the beginning. Itâs only going to get bigger from here on out.
We were lucky enough to sit down with a few of the creators behind the badges of this yearâs DEF CON and the interviews were fantastic. Right here is a lesson on electronic design, manufacturing, and logistics. If youâve ever wanted to be an engineer that ships a product instead of a lowly maker that ships a product, this is the greatest classroom in the world.
Although badgelife may seem like a bunch of hardware engineers sitting behind a pick and place machine for a weekendâs worth of lulz, this is a masterclass of product design and manufacturing. Badgelife is product development, and unlike many other hardware design jobs, the ship date will not slip for any reason. The hardware must be done on time, and if youâre not shipping all the features you promised everyone will be upset. Badgelife is the best experience youâll ever get in engineering for production, product design, and manufacturing.
Meanwhile at Ctrl-H PDX hackerspace:
Anyone in the hackerspace lately may have noticed our @DC503 #badgelife projects taking shape. If you’re headed to @defcon and want to get your hands on this one, or get one of these around your hands, check out http://503.party . See you in Vegas!
Badge¡Life (noun): the art of spending too much time, energy, money, and creativity to design and produce amazing custom electronics and get them into the hands of those who appreciate incredible craftsmanship.
via Unofficial Badges Get Official Recognition at DEF CON: Badge Life Contest â Hackaday
