It is only elusive if people were looking for it and trying to get it. That looks more like a demo board than a badge.

i saw a post from the guy who built them; they’re used for hacking the defcon badge and he was using this to entice people to join his team.

they need to stop screwing around and just hand out laptops or PDAs. these badges are just getting silly.

actually, here’s what i want to see: your “badge” is a blank PCB and a bag of parts. any number of interesting devices could be built, though your choices are restricted by the parts.

it would be easy to build something simple and run-of-the-mill, so creativity would separate the men from the boys. no wussy software mucking, where someone pretty much provides you a hardware platform – yawn.

drone,

There are a number of arduinos that use a pretty standard DIP package spacing (mini, mini pro) as well as ones that are close but not quite arduinos such as Pololu.com’s Baby Orangutan B-168.

In my case, I chose to follow the arduino shield pin headers simply because there was a high chance that people coming to DefCON for badge hacking might already have shield peripherals.

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John,

There are no more integrated peripherals on the hack the badge than you’d find on, say, the arduino mega. The buttons and LED matrix display are on pins not normally brought out (PORTC/PORTA), leaving the shield pins free for general use.

hackaday badges anyone? I’m sure we can get a thru-hole big enough for a lanyard into the bus pirate somehow… maybe the bus pirate + minisd + onboard battery + ethernet probes…

Eric,

Putting any wireless component onboard makes international shipment of the board a nightmare. Depending on the country, there are different RF regulations and requirements.

I checked on the component cost for a nordic wireless chip for 2.4 and 900Mhz, and it’s still pretty prohibitively expensive with a production run of 100 units.

@emilio,

How about a one led POV badge that shocks the wearer into waving the LED around to form characters?

Magic,
2.4 Ghz is one of the most common frequencies, next behind it is 900, the 5.8… there are only so many public freqs and going with anything BUT 2.4 would be outrageously expensive for ANYONE that is just giving something away.(Most common cordless phones sold WORLDWIDE are 2.4)