Defcon Badges

defcon badge

Defcon is off to an incredibly slow start; It’s already 2 hours behind because of safety inspections (not surprising). I wouldn’t be too annoyed, but the first talk of the day is Joe Grand explaining the LED badges. They apparently made 6,055 of these LED badges. There is a PIC10F202 on the back and a switch to change between different flash modes. He even included solder pads to reprogram it. They’re encouraging people to hack the badges and come up with something new. More pictures after the break.

Joe Grand’s operates Grand Idea Studios and has quite a few projects on his site. He also talked at Maker Faire about his Simon game.

badge front
badge back
badge detail

77 thoughts on “Defcon Badges

  1. oh my god ru guys realy trying to piss me off led badge grow up realy high teck peace of rubbish my daughter made one of these and she only five come on now lets not let things slide no more leds lots of love STEVE THE REAL ONE

  2. hot-glue a magnet to the back of it and throw it somewhere and you’re instantly a cool grafitti artiste and will get a glowing writeup on the Make blog about how you’re using technology to change peoples perception of stuff and junk.

  3. Hack the frequency of the LEDs to cause siesures(sp?) in people with epelepsy (sp?)

    Replace with ir leds and program the PIC to cycle through the TV b gone turn off codes when you press the button

    replace the battery with a solar cell and a capasitor

    any more ideas?

  4. oh my god ru guys realy trying to piss me off proper grammer grow up realy 133t hax0rs don’t use real words leds are stupid you should grow up i’ll stick to my electronics r fun kit cause i’m l33t like that lots of love john

    Youre the one who needs to grow up john, thats the coolest badge i’ve seen at any conference, and the fact that they gave us the ability to reprogram/rewire the badge is sweet.

  5. Here’s the datasheet for the PIC: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/41239A.pdf
    512×12 bits program memory, 24 bytes data memory, timer.

    They could have had each badge blink out a unique code. Then, using LEDs as sensors, they wouldn’t be too far away from these eyedroppers: http://www.merl.com/publications/TR2003-035/

    Hmm… 6144 bits of nonvolatile memory, 6055 badges. If you can write the program in 7.4 instructions, you’ll have enough memory to keep track of everyone you run into at the show.

  6. josh, that’s a great idea :)

    i don’t think i/we wrote anything “glowing” besides the fact that LED throwies glow… some folks like throwies, some don’t – but it’s a simple / easy way to get a lot of people started with an extremely easy electronics project.

  7. Im disappointed at the level of literacy around these days in hack-a-day. When it started out you would have intersting people commenting on interesting stuff, but now when I turn to the comment coverage of Defcon I have to read the retards making stupid observations on topics they have no clue about. Ya know if you dont have a background in technology just keep your sad opinions to yourself. Just because you can nearly read properly doesnt entitle you to write where ever you want.

  8. Fair enough. But I find the idea that they’re an “introduction to electronics” in the same spirit as the idea that putting a bumper sticker on your car is an easy introduction to auto mechanics.

    It’s actually more obnoxious on instructables, but Make still paid way too much attention to what is basically a process for constructing complex litter, and to the people who try to fob it off as some sort of intellectual passtime:

    “GRL takes it conceptually deeper by exploring political issues around prison time for graffiti artists and bringing those issues to communities in a gentle way.”

    http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/05/make_podcast_graffiti_research.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

  9. josh, all i can say is i’ve seen dozens and dozens of people first hand go from building throwies to actually build “real” projects – it’s a gateway drug, just like putting linux on an ipod isn’t anything special, but that too moved some folks from passive to active participants with their devices. as far as paying too much attention to it in make, we did 4-5 posts and a one page article – the posts are now buried in the archives and make has around 200 pages per issue.. i’m not sure if i think throwies are being passed off as an intellectual pursuit – i do know it got a lot of people in to making things, and as they make stuff we can get more people to make more things, far more complex and ideally not so polarizing :)

    anyway, i dont mind and all feedback – feel free to email / post on make any time too…

  10. HEY, HEY, Hey, hey….LEDs are awesome….any TRUE techie loves the concept, beauty, and simplicity of that little glowing diode. Comon people…

    REAL Techs unite…LEDs Kick A$$

    Noobs and Pros love LEDs

  11. first of all dylan u need a fucking good kicking u twat and then media kidd ur so fucking stupid u will all burn in hell u lozers u think ur so fucking clever dont u well give me ur address and i will come over there and kick ur arsses LOVE STEVE

  12. AM transmitter. The internal oscillator is 4 MHz; it wouldn’t be hard to make a divide-by-4 output at 1 MHz (center of the 525 kHz to 1715 kHz AM radio band). It would be on-off keying, so sound quality would be limited. Still, it could beep out a little tune.

    You could use the OSCCAL register to make primitive FM, but I don’t know how fast the internal oscillator changes frequency. The main trouble is that most FM radios only tune in much higher frequencies – 88-108 MHz; the microcontroller is probably designed to not produce harmonic noise in that range.

    Oh well. Wish I was there so I could try this. I wonder if anyone there has an AM radio.

  13. +1 to make them a tv-killer remote :P

    Hey Steve,

    What is wrong with you? you seem to have a phobia of LED’s

    I’ll tell you what, nobody is listening to you.

    Nobody has been listening to you for a long time because every time you see LED’s you go “OMGZ0R LED POWERED RANGEFINDER MY DAUGHTER MADE ONE OF THEM IN YEAR 2”

    Perhaps if you had more friends you wouldn’t need to waste your time here. that is all i am going to say to you.

  14. hey guys, lets stop arguing with each other, and get down to the real thing we all want, persuading eliot to ship these things out.

    just wanna comment about one comment (lol)

    23: Hey Steve,

    What is wrong with you? you seem to have a phobia of LED’s

    I’ll tell you what, nobody is listening to you.

    well clearly dear sah you are because you are taking the time to read his comments and remark to them. you can’t listen on the internet, you can only read. leave the guy alone. @_@

  15. the badges arent too bad…
    They are kind of big and the strap is aquward… either way its good to be at defcon. PS if you want help with anything drop me a line you have my number..im the one with the psp. :)

  16. I bet you will see these badges for-sale.
    Wish I was at defcon.

    Hey Steve,
    If your trying to impress someone, learning to spell would help.

    realy = really teck = tech peace = piece

  17. I’d like to see some biofeedback mods to that puppy. Maybe a heart rate monitor? It would be pretty cool to put it over your heart so people would have a visual representation of your pulse. Very visceral ya know?

    You could probably hack something like that together with one of those pulse watches some people wear when they exercise.

    Anyhoo, wish I could be there too! Why must all the fun conferences happen to the west of me!

  18. Oh yeah, steve, john, and dylan, you guys suck, and your 5 year old daughter, steve, did not make the SIMPLEST of electronics so shut-up, john, I can hack and know several hackers who DON’t call themselves “1337 h4x0r2”, and dylan, I’m on your side except this idea is great, DEFCON RULES!
    A led badge that you can reprogram is awesome, I wish I had one!

  19. i usually don’t post EVER but i’m sick of this little shit steve trolling every post about fscking leds.
    Hackaday is going to lose it’s audience if they don’t get off their asses, pick up the ban stick and smack these idiots back to myspace or slashdot where they belong.

  20. #33 – Yes, many PICs do support ADC, though not this one.

    Re: steve. Wow. It’s always been easy for people to ignore the first post, but some people seem to be finding that harder and harder. Re #43, the site will not lose popularity based on one troll’s posting. Comments will lose focus based on a thread of people’s replies though.

  21. slashdot?! Don’t tar us with that brush! We have comment moderation for a reason, so we don’t have to put up with that crap. Myspace, I’ll agree with you there, though ^_~.

    I’m still undecided whether Steve is 11, or he’s just a troll who likes to get us all excited. In either case, don’t feed the trolls.

    -Tommi =^_^=

  22. Personaly I think “fake” steve (although I think they all maybe one and the same) needs the IP filter treatment.
    The badge is a cool idea. I have never worked with electronics extensivly so I am not a hacker yet, buy I would love to be.
    Defcon rules! ^_^ Enjoy the show! (If they would move the show to Minnesota that would be cool!)

  23. hi its the troll here PMSL u sad peopel and my daughter at 5 years old did put one of these badges together but she got more sense now so she has nothing to do with leds she says there to childish and she is so right and yes i am more inteligent than u lot so come on lets have some decent hacks and plz keep feeding the troll PMSL

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