Wired took a look at this year’s Ninja Party badges. We were giddy about all the goodies involved in last year’s must-have badge that served as an invitation to the party. It was tailor-made for hacking, including an on-board disassembler. This year’s details are still a bit sparse but the offering is more along the lines of a market-ready product. The badges come in hand held gaming format, with a d-pad and two buttons. They can connect wirelessly with each other and with hidden base stations, allowing participants to fight in the digital realm for LED-indicated achievements. The teaser is tantalizing and we can’t wait to hear details about the real/digital gaming adventure soon to unfold.
These kids have too much money and free time. But then again, they’ll be (assuming they aren’t already) working for chip designers in Silicon Valley… It’s obvious their hardware skills are top-notch.
a badge… naturally :)
That PCB design is just beautiful. I wish I had one of these just to play around with on my own.
saying someone has “too much free time” after they did something cool just reeks of jealousy. i’ll bet the creators have just as much free time as you do. what do you do with your free time?
Uber cool….
Watch out for people going to the Pirate party… They will try and snag your badge.
No one in Ninja party is a kid.
I feel next year they will be handing out full on laptops. Their party is up there next to FailBlog’s party. Many lulz.
Mmm…looks like its zigbee wireless communication.
I want one! GIME GIME GIME!!!
i want one ^^ very nice indeed.
i hat a hard laught after seeing RTFM at the bottom of the “quick guide” :P
zomg…
I wonder if Ninja Burger is catering? o.O
Love that game XD
@techrat
They were sponsored by Facebook and Lookout Mobile Security. I’m pretty sure they didn’t spend to much of their own money. ;-)
Also, there were two teams of multiple people, with each person working on specific areas of the badge. So I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an issue of “too much free time” as much as it was a wonderful team effort.
Supposedly they’re going to update their site after Defcon with a build log. I’m hoping the parts aren’t TOO hard to find, because I would LOVE to make a clone. :-)
That is a pretty epic badge.
Is there any info out yet on the regular DefCon badges? Those are steadily improving too, and I love all the little hidden goodies they stick in them.
What about the rest of us lowly mortals ?
Maybe my age is showing, but reminds me of the
old “Studio 54” in NYC. Where hordes of desperate
folks would line up outside a door hoping to be
judged ‘worthy’ of being allowed admittance.
This “invite only” thing reeks of “elite”-ism.
(or is that 3l33t) ?
Some of us anti-social types never played well
with others and did our own thing. Wouldn’t be
surprised if someone showed up with a wide area
RF jammer rendering the “wireless” aspect of
this toy useless.
@M4CGYV3R: Yep, I’m working on a post about the conference badges. Just trying to gather all the info I can. Look for it later today or tomorrow morning.
I notice the LCDs come from Adafruit: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/07/28/defcon-ninja-party-badge-sneak-peek/ — That’s also an amazing price for even 1 unit of a serial LCD display.
@Brennan: I’d totally hit it, too. Here’s hoping for schematics/BOM/whatnot after the con!
@Roman Dulgarov: The MC13224V is what is providing the Zigbee. Check out Redbee’s Econotag for fun :)
Here’s some inside scoop on the Ninja badges, as I’m friends with a couple of the folks involved and got the scoop from them last week.
First, full schematics, code, etc will get posted sometime fairly soon after Defcon is over. Keep an eye on http://ninjas.org/badges/defcon18.html. It will all get there, just as it did for last years badge.
Second, this badge is totally hackable. Sure, the finished product is uber cool, but there is definite potential to load your own code up on the MC13224v processor. There’s an FTDI programming header on board and you can code using the OpenEmbedded or Contiki enviroments. Check out http://mc1322x.devl.org/ for details.
@RedNeckJoe
Sure most “outsiders” are jealous when they see this type of events with free goodies and high-tech toys. But in the end the people being invited to these events are on our side when it comes to developing new ideas into real life “toys”.
Let them have their parties so we can get our toys.
@ducksauz:
Yay for ducksauz! If I was at DEFCON, I’d totally be replaying packets left and right.
I figured that the schematics and other goodies would be out once I found the ninja page and saw that last year’s badge had them released :)
@RedneckJoe
There are plenty of official defcon events which all can obtain. Maybe if we were back at Tropicana or Monte Carlo with 200-400 attendees then everyone could have a badge/invite to the private parties. But that is not possible at the Defcon of today. Who is going to sponsor a party of the same caliber for 15,000-20,000 people?
I actually ended up having a conversation with one of the ninjas about the hardware and he gave my buddy and me two badges.
They were giving a lot of badges out at the conference. They spent some time in the Hardware Hacking Village, i know they probably gave around 10-20 out there along.
The party was pretty awesome, facebook dropped $30k on alcohol alone.