In the bustling world of tech conferences, swag is pretty standard fare – you know, the usual pens, notebooks, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, a quirky gadget or two. However, every once in a while, you stumble upon something truly unique, something that not only catches your eye but also captures the essence of creativity and engineering. Today, let’s dive into an interesting piece of conference swag I encountered recently: a conference badge so advanced, it is, in every sense, a microcontroller capable of much more than just flashing your name and barcode.
At GitHub Universe, the annual developer conference held by GitHub, attendees were handed not just any badge but a printed PCB badge equipped with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and its own full-color screen. The badge, looking more like a gadget out of a sci-fi novel, was preloaded with apps including a Tamagotchi, Etch A Sketch, and Flappy Bird. Additionally, it could display the bearer’s GitHub details once connected to Wi-Fi, making it not only a badge but a personalized digital profile on your chest.
This video is from Wes Bos.
This alone was fascinating, but what really piqued my interest was the potential for hacking this badge. Embedded with a Raspberry Pi and GPIO pins, its capabilities extended far beyond its pre-set functions. In the spirit of a true developer, the intrigue was in bending and twisting its capabilities to see what new forms could take shape.
During the conference, alongside distributing these innovative badges, there were giveaways of a 3D printed light with 5V addressable LED pixels designed to connect with an ESP32. However, leveraging the embedded microcontroller within the badge presented a unique challenge and opportunity: Could the badge itself be used to power and control these LEDs?
To explore this possibility, I utilized the GPIO pins on the badge, which provided access to 3.3 volts and a ground, along with four other pins for data outputs. After some tinkering and admittedly a bit of re-soldering (a necessary evil in the land of hardware hacks), it was time to code.
The badge was programmable with MicroPython, a lean and efficient implementation of Python for microcontrollers. This allowed for a relatively easy setup—I wrote some basic utility functions to interact with the NeoPixel LEDs, although I had to come up with a makeshift solution since the badge didn’t come with this library pre-installed. By capturing button presses and corresponding data outputs, I could control the color and sequence of the LED lights. With everything connected and coded, a test run lit up the LEDs in a delightful array of colors and patterns, from basic single colors to a mesmerizing rainbow mode.
This hack wasn’t just a demonstration of technical skills but also a testament to the creative possibilities inherent in modern technology. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the tools we need to create something wonderful are already in our hands, waiting to be seen in a new light.
Thinking ahead, the blend of connectivity, portability, and programmability in devices like these opens a myriad of possibilities. Imagine integrating your daily wearables with other IoT devices around you or creating a mesh of interconnected gadgets each performing unique tasks but managed from a single wearable controller. The boundaries are as vast as one’s imagination.
As I wrap up, I’m left pondering a rather whimsical idea: What if conference badges could communicate with each other, creating spontaneous networks of developers interacting in a mesh of digital conversations? It sounds a bit futuristic, but then again, so did a fully programmable conference badge.
