06-27, 17:00–18:30 (America/Los_Angeles), Hardware Hacking Stage
Electronic conference badges are cool and everything, but they're A LOT of time, money, and effort including but not limited to hardware, software and art design, testing, manufacturing, testing, provisioning, and repairing.
I've got a relatively simple, cheap, mass-producible badge design. We'll start out by looking at and understanding the design and implementation, highlighting the areas worth customizing (and which to leave as-s). Then we'll spend the majority of our time working in KiCAD to customize the hardware, CircuitPython to customize the software, or both if you have time.
We'll wrap up with some discussion of how to handle badge logistics for events of different sizes, and warn about some of the many pitfalls that electronic badges suffer. You should walk away with the design for your own customized badge design plus everything you need to have it mass produced.
I've got a badge design that can be customized and mass produced for as little as $5 in quantity. My hope is that instead of starting from scratch, people can start with this, do a little (or a lot of) customization to either the hardware or software, and have a really good chance of delivering a working electronic badge on a predictable schedule.
The badge is based on an RP2040, (cheap), programmed by editing a CircuitPython text file (easy), and powered with a standard AA or AAA battery (safe). By the time we have this workshop, the core badge design will have been used for two separate conferences, and have been professionally assembled as a prototype and for production both by quick-turn and specialized PCBA services.
Everyone should bring a laptop and install KiCad and/or a good text editor for python code (Mu, VSCode, etc). Everyone will get a fully functional prototype badge to work with and keep.
Joe hasn't updated his bio in too long, so he's making this one up quick. Joe teaches classes on, and builds tools for hardware hacking. Toorcamp is his favorite event. Although he probably won't deliver tacos by drone in 2024, he'll will hopefully come up with something even better - or at least different - for this year.