Electronic conference badges are an integral part of our culture, and have featured many times here. The norm for a badge is an exquisitely designed printed circuit board with some kind of microcontroller circuit on it, often a display, and some LEDs.
This is not enough though for [Mastro Gippo], for he has given us an interesting alternative, the shell of a Nokia 3310 mobile phone fitted with a new motherboard holding an ESP32 module, and of course that classic display. It is to be the badge for IHC Camp, which initialism if you hadn’t guessed stands for Italian Hacker Camp, and which will run from the 2nd to the 5th of August 2018 in Padova, Italy. It’s worth reminding readers, at the time of writing IHC tickets are still available, so get ’em while they’re hot!
The board itself is a beautiful piece of work, and aside from the Nokia’s keyboard and display it holds the ESP module and an STM32F103 microcontroller that handles all the peripherals. There is no microphone, after all this is a badge rather than a phone, but there is space for a LoRa module. He’s done another fascinating post about the PCB design, including the on-board wireless antenna.
We have seen a lot about badges from the #BadgeLife scene surrounding the USA’s DEFCON courtesy of our colleague [Brian Benchoff], so it is particularly interesting to see badges from the opposite side of the Atlantic. This is an artform whose journey still has a way to go, and we’ll be along for the ride!
The amount of vias in that PCB is overwhelming…
It is just via stiching and via shielding of tracks. This is common in RF pcbs to ensure the ground impedance is low.
Yes but , does it worth it? I kinda feel that the esp32 doesn’t have enough sensitivity/power output to need to be so careful with ground impedance , clearly all that drilling is not cheap….
Holes are free!
Is tapping them that’s expensive!
Mastro, tanto rispetto , questo progetto e’ fantastico :)
Depending on the fab… there is often a max holes/area^2
And they’ll either not do it or charge you more for it.
Most PCB fabs don’t have additional costs. JLCPCB didn’t have anything to say about my holes :)
They’re air holes. They make it go faster.
How much extra effort would be required to turn it in to … a working phone?
Not much. It can have a GPS too if you drop a SIM868 in it
IHC, International Harvester Corporation?
http://www.bryant-motors.com/image/112079279.png
And a pet term for International was Intertrashpile
During the late 1970’s, IHC was purchased by Tenneco (Tennessee Oil and Gas) as a tax write-off, as IHC was losing money. Tenneco increased R&D funding to IHC, and with it IHC improved quality and marketability. As IHC became profitable, Tenneco was forced to sell it!
Another pet name for IHC was “cornbinder” regardless of the product.
I really like the “originality” of this badge, and I still see so many “skins” for that phone in 2nd Hand stores, that someone attending the conference could easily “customize” their badge!
Now, if he’d only retained the original battery!…
B^)
What makes you think we didn’t use the original battery? We did! :) Problem is, the batteries you can find on the market are pretty old and don’t hold capacity. Don’t ask me how I know that :)
“What makes you think we didn’t use the original battery?”
I didn’t see the battery in the photos, thanks for replying!