We’re going to build an electronic Hackaday Badge, and by “we”, I mean Hackaday community members who are passionate about the project.
I’ll be leading the charge. I had a great learning experience the last time I helped design the e-paper badge for the 2013 Open Hardware Summit, and hope to learn a lot along the way this time too. Since then, Badges have come a long way – at cons like DEFCON, LayerONE, Shmoocon, The Next Hope, Open Hardware Summit, The EMF, SAINTCON, SXSW Create, The Last Hope, TROOPERS11, ZaCon V and of course the rad1o from this year’s CCCamp. Word is that this year’s Open Hardware Summit badge is going to be pretty kickass too. So, we have some very big shoes to fill. But this doesn’t have to be about “my badge is better than yours”. And this badge isn’t meant to be specific to any single con or event. So what does the Badge do, then? “It’s a physical extension of the hackaday.io community, made specifically for hacker gatherings of all types and sizes.”
Regulars who have been following our blog will recall the Mooltipass project which kick-started the “Developed on Hackaday” series. The idea is to bring together a team of interested developers and Hackaday staff to build a project created by and for the community. Along the way, we’ll document it on hackaday.io so everyone else can keep track of the project as we progress. Building hardware using a distributed team is difficult, but it’s getting easier by the day. All of the design development already happens on computers, but geographic issues like team members in different time zones and getting prototypes built, assembled, and distributed for alpha and beta testing needs to be taken into consideration on distributed engineering projects. Our goal is to document all of these hurdles and other issues to help others who want to take on their own engineering projects.
So we’re now kicking off a second project in the series. We haven’t fleshed out the details yet. It will be tied in to the user’s hackaday.io account, have a radio module and IR Tx/Rx, LED array and/or graphic display of some kind, some buttons, a buzzer and other stuff most badges have. We’ll need some nifty firmware and a web interface to round it up. Think of it as a physical extension of your hackaday.io avatar. We’d also like to have two flavors – a vanilla “user” badge and a superuser “sudo” badge to rule the other badges. Of course, we promise not to be evil and abuse the SU privilege. This Badge project was proposed by [Brian Benchoff], and he’s jotted down some of his initial thoughts in this project log.
What’s next? Follow the project and request an invite to the team. Let us know if you would like to contribute towards hardware, firmware code or website front end. We’ll be using Group Messaging to discuss the project. Let’s get crackin’!
Is the group messaging link supposed to bring me to a dedicated discussion channel?
Anyway… good luck to you!
Could you give him guidance on getting started, such a the gmail list you used for Mooltipass?
They’ve never asked for my help…
Well just chime in anyway lol. Mooltipass was a success!
Why?
Because building hardware is fun.
useless hardware too?
I’m clearing some space in my junk pile for it now.
Cell phone app?
Kickstarter? B^)
I guess the theme is set to be “kill it, kill privacy” eh. Oh well.
Pull the battery when you don’t want to be tracked? Just like leaving your cellphone at home when you go out to murder people. I mean. Do things and don’t wish to be tracked… Nah I’m sure you can add a switch to the radio module to turn it off, to save battery and avoid paranoia.
I don’t think anybody is really worried about the tracking of a HaD badge per se, it’s more that it seems to advertise the concept of tracking and ID’ing at a time when that is so overdone already and a time where that is a real issue.
And I think they could have picked another focus.
Mind you I also don’t get the concept of the staff encouraging badges near them to be as loud as possible.. you’d think they would encourage a special executive reduction in volume when you are near a HaD staffer.
Or maybe it should beep loudly until it gets near another HaD badge, like a baby leopard when it lost track of its mom.
Ah yes. I’m sure as the discussion progresses it’ll be a switch to the transceiver, and there should be a lot of discussion over security, especially when they have had multiple postings about how security is underwhelmed in projects. and the project log has “Beeps/flashes when within range of (other users) | (hackaday crew)
A switch to select between beeping and flashing” so beeping is already designed to be turned off when wanted.
I believe they just really want to endorse hackaday users to be able to meet up IRL without planning it much beforehand, unplanned meetups during cons. And the shape will undoubtedly advertise the site.
Yeah I’d think they’d get swamped with fans and they’d want to make it more of a surprise/ harder task to track down staff members.
I think it’s just a social thing at conferences. And good practice for getting boards made. And it’s an optional thing to use the badge, it’s the mandatory ID’ing that should be more concerning (until you have everyone faking names all the time so essentially everyone has no identity at all).
And on a meeting with HaD visitors you expect someone to make a badge that can poll nearby badges and copy the info and then emulate that badge really. That’s what it’s all about, hacks :)
And what if trolls pretend to be HaD staff with a fake ID? And maybe do something embarrassing to the suckers that fall for it.
But maybe that’s the idea.
Yeah, that’s the idea on hacks. And if people fake it and people fall for it that makes it even funnier (and relatively harmless unless they kidnap them etc. lol…). Depends on authentication designed into badge and user willing to authenticate.
Apparently the project was started 10 months ago, and just now an article about it. Well, it should get much more traction now there’s a post on it. The GM is completely naked and the parameters of the project 10 mos later are bare. This is going to be great. :D How/when do we decide what main chip to use? arm/atmega… idk I’m mech and deficient in EE…
WE build our own chip!
… we can do that? Is this serious? That’s really neat. And very time consuming to get a consensus on open ended design…
“I” was joking… but with last weeks topics on FPGA based processors… well, I’m open to that (although I’d be in over my head).
Yeah I had to search it, but there are companies that advertise printing your custom ICs. But I have issues understanding using complex ICs and circuits in general, I would be completely useless until they decide what all it entails. Although, it would be really badass to have a hackaday IC running it. Maybe next time.
Sure we can. I’m starting to play with FPGAs now actually.
Evil glowing eyes! (slowly brightening and fading)
Oh, and actual metric wrench sizes for the “crossbones” which will easily break, like the HaD bottle opener!
Toss in multiple µCs, so the ARM guys, the PIC guys, and the Atmel guys won’t have anything to flame about.
Isn’t there a “new” PIC with a Cortex M7 or something? Hillbilly wedding!
Oh! and let’s not forget to put in an FTDI chip! B^)
that badge would make an excellent quadcopter frame
And at a convention they could be released and swarm the HaD staff!
Or lead you to one of the elusive HaD staffers!
Design by committee, I;m sure this will be swell
It’ll weigh 20 kilos, not including the keyboard, 3D mouse, HDMI monitor and 3D printer! B^)
And like the Mootlipass, let the sole developer pick some weird-arse toy language no-one else uses, let alone has heard of.
And make sure he leaves at the industry standard “90% done!” mark.
Well, if you leave it to a sole developer, wouldn’t it be their perogative to use whatever language they want?
The developer will write the software in the language that I tell him too.
Of course if I neglect to do that (welcome to project management!) then I can’t really complain when I go “WTF!” at what they’ve done, write it all again and delay things by 6 months: see “Developer Déjà-vu” at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mooltipass-open-source-offline-password-keeper#/updates
“Sure, use some toy language that’s only a year old that no-one else has heard off, what could go wrong?”
(Happens everywhere, people get distracted by the new & shiny.)
Anool
Depending on what you use radio wise (I’d like to help on radio firmware if I can; perhaps IR too (for a simple sensor (not sure if you want data exchanged) the Silicon Labs SI114x chip is a big seller)).
Was wondering if dev info will be totally public so I can help on a non-committal basis? Normally pretty busy but want to help on one of these hackaday projects.
Nice tip on the Si114x. We’ll check if it fits within the BoM cost limits. You’re most welcome to pitch in – even on a non-committal basis. The development will be as public as we can manage. Logs are being posted on the hackaday.io project page. There are three separate git repositories for the HW, FW and the SW. And a spreadsheet is helping us keep track of things. You get get links to all of this from the projcet page.
It’d be great if it had the potential to be hacked into something useful as well as cool/fun. Perhaps getting EFF looped in (because, why not?) and come up with a way to have the badges check for illegal wi-fi blocking (see http://gizmodo.com/its-about-damn-time-fcc-says-convention-centers-cant-b-1724805719 ). Would this require GSM capability to fully implement?
Something “cool” eh? So, we’ll put a small fan on it to cool the processor AND the wearer!
Following another comment about it looking like a quadcopter board, it could have 4 fans!
[Anool]
How about basing it on the HaD Pro Trinket?
(or use it as an initial development platform, moving up to a more powerful uController as features creep.)
There could be two development tracks, a FAST track which uses readily available modules such as an nRF+ or an ESP*, an SDR
and stuff like that with a common software development enviroment.
And then when it is 90% decided, begin with a custom PCB to incorporate the features without the bulk of the modules.
PLEASE use common/readily available electrical connectors!
Incorporate DIP and some SMD (relatively easy to solder pieces, e.g. xsistors, xtal, resistors, caps)
Do you have a board building house in mind (in India)? (PCB, pick and place)
After a long round of discussions, we’ve settled on using the ATSAMR21 – an ARM Cortex M0 with a 2.4 GHz radio combined. This will allow us to do some nice stuff like create an ad-hoc network, among other things. We’re going to create a prototype board consisting of the R21 and some associated parts so the firmware folks can start working on it quickly, while the main hardware is in development.
Check out the tentative BoM here : https://hackaday.io/project/3009/log/24360-some-thoughts-on-the-bom
Don’t forget to incorporate an air freshener, because…
“We don’t need no steenking badges!”
For those who do not understand the reference.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040897/quotes
The badge – which we’ve named HaDge (Hackaday Badge!) – will not be shaped like the jolly wrencher for sure. It’s not a very optimal shape when considering DFM issues.