Hackit: Ideal Conference Badge?

August 11, 2009 by Eliot 28 Comments

In 2006, Defcon 14 premiered a unique electronic badge. All it did was blink, but it raised the bar for what was expected from a hacker conference badge. In 2007, they went from 2 LEDs to 95 in a scrolling marquee. Along with a POV mode, the badge had two capacitive switches to let the user edit the displayed text. Defcon 16’s badge featured an IR transmitter and receiver for transferring files from an SD card. It worked as a TV-B-Gone and had pads to access a USB bootloader. That was the same year that The Last Hope debuted their RFID tracking badges.

This year the official Defcon badge reacted to sound, but they were no longer the only game in town. Ninja Networks brought their 10 character party badges with a built in debugger. The Arduino compatible HackTheBadge 1.0 also made an appearance. With these new entrants into the field, we wondered what you’d want to see in your ideal badge. What badge would you want to see at next year’s Defcon? Leave you comments below and keep in mind that it should be an idea that is easy to cheaply mass produce.

UPDATED: Forgot to mention the Neighborcon 2 badge based on the GoodFET20.

[Photo: Ninja Networks]

Hack A Day Is Hiring

August 11, 2009 by Eliot 12 Comments

We’ve added a handful of contributors in the last couple months, but we’re still looking for more people to contribute daily posts and help expand the site.

This is a paid, freelancing position that requires professionalism, consistency, and reliability. We want to hear from people that are passionate about software/hardware hacking and growing Hack a Day. To apply, send the following to jobs@hackaday.com

A short bio about yourself
3 example daily posts written in the style of Hack a Day
3 software or hardware how-tos you’d like to see. For examples of work we’ve done in the past, look here, here, here, and here.
A couple sentences on how you would improve the site either through features or content
Any additional reasons why you would make a good fit for Hack a Day

Do not send any attachments. Having your own blog you can show off is a definite plus.

[photo:fbz]

Dry Ice Cannon

August 11, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

[vimeo= http://vimeo.com/6034556%5D

[Alexander] sent in his entry into a “creativity contest” at his university. He and some friends put together this dry ice cannon. Take note of the creative mechanism they used to mix the water with the dry ice. A large amount of gas is expelled as soon as the two begin to meet. If the gas is supposed to escape through the same opening, it is difficult to get all the material through. They have added a second opening just for the exhaust during mixing. Great job guys. How about some downloadable plans.

HackTheBadge 1.0

August 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[Martin] tipped us off to HackTheBadge 1.0. Possibly more elusive than the NinjaBadge, HackTheBadge has a Dpad, a 3×5 LED matrix, Arduino compatable headers, and 46 GPIO channels. You can download the open source plans if you didn’t get one at Defcon. You probably didn’t, there were only 14 given out. You can also order one pre assembled. This makes us wonder, does being low in quantity qualify this as elusive?

Ninja Networks Party Badge

August 10, 2009 by Eliot 24 Comments

UPDATE: The director’s cut of the story

While coverage of the official Defcon badge has been pretty heavy, there was a badge that was far more exclusive and talked about way more. For the last ten years at Defcon a group of hackers known as Ninja Networks hosted an invitation-only party for selected attendees. For the 2009 event, [cstone] and [w0z] created an electronic badge which acted as the ticket to the party. The badge is based around an 8-bit Freescale microcontroller (MC9S08QE8) which drives 10 individual 16-segment HIOX-format LED displays. Continue reading “Ninja Networks Party Badge” →

DOSbox On Zipit

August 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

poolrad (Custom)

Who out there has a Zipit? Great, now out of the five of you, who really wants to run Dos on it? Well, for the one or two of you left reading, now you can. The directions can be found here. [Hunter] has worked out a way to get DosBox running on his Zipit. At 315 mhz his old DOS games, like AD&D shown above, are running quite snappily. You can download everything you need to get up and running from the site. If DOS isn’t your thing, you may want to check out the Linux how to as well.

[thanks Harold]

Neo Geo Mini Arcade

August 9, 2009 by Eliot 20 Comments

neopocket

[Pocket Lucho], the builder of mini arcade cabinets, is back with another build. This time it’s a miniature Neo Geo arcade machine (translated). The build is very compact and neat. He attached the control panel and the PS one display using magnets to make the wiring more accessible. It has video out and second player input too. You’ll find an assembly video embedded below along with a trial run. Continue reading “Neo Geo Mini Arcade” →