Aaron Swartz
5 stars based on
63 reviews
Hardware is the future. There is no better proof of this than the hardware clans that have grown up around DEF CON, which in recent years has become known as Badgelife. I was first drawn to the custom hardware badges of the Whiskey Pirates at DC22 back in Hardware badges were being made by several groups at that time but that was mainly happening in isolation while this year the badge makers are in constant contact with each other.
This served as tech support, social hour, and feature brainstorming for all on the channel. In the past badges were developed without much info getting out during the design process. This year, there was a huge leap forward thanks to a unified badgelife API: In the multitude of images below you frequently see Rigado modules used. What follows is the result of a frantic few hours trying to get through the sheer volume of badges and people to share with you all the custom hardware on display.
I knew that Brian Benchoff was working on a badge in his spare time. I had no idea the production he had undertaken. He had been working on it for months, ordering several PCB test runs to get the look just right. Brian used a clear solder mask and two layers of mr robot twitter header maker when he had Seeed Studio produce the PCBs. It starts off with a pre-conference online mr robot twitter header maker called a casefile.
Anyone who solved the casefile mr robot twitter header maker able to purchase one of these badges two hours before they went on sale to the general conference-goers. The badge is necessary to solve the rest of the contest challenges. Our friend [Krux] is the mastermind behind the badge design. As you can see, it is laid out to resemble a rotary phone. These let back-mounted LEDs shine through.
The badge comes as a kit so to use it mr robot twitter header maker first must solder on those surface-mount LED as well as a mr robot twitter header maker for the screen and the LiPo on the back.
The second mr robot twitter header maker terriblebut the third was a solder kit of Ohm, the Tindie dog. The DC Zia crew had about 10 people working on the badge this year. The badge is a shield for an Arduino RIP.
Last year they built a badge that was a shield for a Raspberry Pi and had a full-color video screen which they were showing off at the meetup. They are also joining in another trend, several badge groups including MrRobotBadge were giving away custom fidget spinners as swag. XOR badge since I did a full hands-on with the badge before the con. The Bender on a Bender was top three most popular badges at the con if not the most popular.
They had a hugely successful Kickstarter and everyone was trying to get one at the con. They shipped with the multiplayer features disabled until a code was input. This was Tweeted out at the beginning of the mr robot twitter header maker and once people unlocked theirs the botnet game began. I was able to terminal into it and escalate my privileges to get root [ Hyr0n ] did help me out by suggesting which of his hint Tweets to revisit.
I came across [Samy Kamkar] with on in the Chill Room. The code running on the ARM processor was read protect and [Samy] was using mr robot twitter header maker Chip Whisperer to try to side-channel attack the mr robot twitter header maker. Note the brain-slug addon board. There were about 10 of these built to test out the breakout header for hardware hacking. Badgelife is often pushing right up against deadlines to get everything finished — this is an extracurricular activity after all.
This is the un-populated Mr robot twitter header maker Hacking Village badge. You can see the full glory in this animated Tweet. The Tribble badge was a total surprise for me. The little balls of fluff were built around Adafruit Trinket boards, with addressable LED discs for eyes. I checked out the associated website and it seems there are some crypto challenges waiting to be solved over there. In addition, the firmware broadcasts username and then play a game of contagion. In total, they built boards plus the 10 prototypes.
Presales were coordinated through labs hackerspace in Salt Lake City. This is the second year Rushan has led the design and 5 years total for the hackerspace.
The Octopus badge was built for Bsides Vancouver a few months back. There are mr robot twitter header maker WS modules for the eyes but [Jake] usually leaves them off because they drain the coin cell battery really quickly. You can get your hands on the design files on his blog. It was inherently a multiplayer badge, letting you discover and battle other badge mr robot twitter header maker wirelessly in a video role-playing game. You could walk around the con and see people sitting around glued to these badges like a Game Boy.
Thursday night was the first night everyone was getting together and when we ran into [Zapp] from the Mr robot twitter header maker XOR crew he was already topped out in level, and XP. XOR firmware and so [Zapp] dump and disassembled it to artificially boost his player ranking. They had a very successful Kickstarter earlier in the summer. This badge was introduced to me as the only badge with a Vacuum Fluorescent Display on it.
Powering it is a cell in a battery holder. This is becoming an incredibly popular setup for badges and other custom hardware.
You can check out the design, which is based around an ATmega, on the Team Bazooka repo. We also took a close look at the Hacker Warehouse badge before the con. It has an ESP laid out right on the board rather than opting to solder on a mr robot twitter header maker module. One of the really cool things that went along with the Hacker Warehouse badge is that they shared their space in the vendor area with other Badgelife folks.
This provided an area for people who had acquired any of the badges shown off in this article a place and time to meet up with the badge creators themselves. Thank you to [ Joe Fitz ] for letting us crash it. The party is privately financed and supporting these badges is one way to get yourself into the party. One hundred of these badges were made through the effort of four team members and with the labor-saver of professional assembly. You can see the Rigado familiar rigado module on the back, and the coin cell that powers the badge.
I really enjoyed seeing the lanyard, which is a USB-to-Serial cable. You are literally wear what you need to hack it around your neck.
SecKC is the Kansas City infosec meetup. They wanted the badge to be a devboard and based it around an NRF module from Sparkfun. The crew had a preorder of 50 boards and ended up building The puffy badge is another that we had an in-depth look at before the con.
Searching for router chips that could run linux, 40 of the modules were ordered for the project. More details about the development process are available on the website. Look at the power regulation on the back of that thing! Not to be outdone by himself[Blenster] was also sporting a DerbyCon Black badge which he designed and built himself. Those LEDs have a tiny pitch and he hand-placed and hand soldered with an iron — incredible.
The Dragonfly Badge was featured on Hackaday before the con. One of the really nice touches is the aesthetic of the IR receiver on the tail. In true hacker fashion, the rest were being reworked in the hotel room. I saw a ton of these around the con so I suspect the rework effort was worth it! The Crypto and Privacy Village badge was one of the most gorgeous pieces of hardware on hand.
The team went all out, even delivering the badge in beautiful matte black boxes with guilded lettering and a magnetic closure. The lanyardware have a cypher on them, the back of the badge has a cypher on it. There were PCB keys, ornately cut in interesting shapes. It drives a backlit display with a rotary encoder on the front and a few capacitive touch sensors.
Plugging into the badge you were greeted with MicroPython for you own badge hacking. On the wireless side, it finds other badges. This gets dialed up to twelve when the 3D printed parts are added. The plastic parts on the Tiki badge are snap fit, with plastic bosses for holes on the badge, tiny ledges to clasp the PCB firmly, and a bit of vellum used as a diffusor for the eyes.
The 1Bitsy 1UP badge should be an incredibly familiar form factor. With a beautiful color display and audio, this is the portable gaming experience you remember, but hanging around your neck as a conference badge. The dev board on the front is the 1Bitsy. This was given out to all attendees at the Open Hardware Summit last October. Mine is still on my desk waiting for some love and this is the type of demo I needed to get really excited about it. At the con, [ Piotr Esden-Tempski ] was running a custom game he wrote for it and the thing is super fast.
The pattern demonstration shown here is running at 80 FPS and this is without a framebuffer. I missed syncing up with him at the meetup but later ran into [Red] in the Chill Room. It is sniffing LoRa packets and displaying them on two screens.
