It’s our great pleasure to announce that Joe [Kingpin] Grand is going to be our keynote speaker at the 2022 Supercon!
If you don’t know Joe, he’s a hacker’s hacker. He’s behind the earliest DEFCON electronic badges, to which we can trace our modern #badgelife creative culture. He was at the l0pht when it became the most publicly visible hackerspace in the USA, at the dawn of what we now think of as cybersecurity. And moreover, he’s a tireless teacher of the art of hardware hacking.
Joe’s talk at DEFCON 22 about reverse engineering PCBs on a hacker budget is on our top-10 must watch playlist, and his JTAGulator debug-port enumeration device has been present at the start of countless hacking sessions. But again, it’s his enthusiasm for creating, his inspiring “what if I poke at this thing this way?” attitude, and overwhelming hacker spirit that make Joe a long-overdue speaker at Supercon!
His keynote talk is, of course, about a project he’s working on. Aiming to bring back the best part of the 1980s, aside from the BBS, Joe made “The World’s Thinnest Boom Box,” an open source, Raspberry Pi-based music player complete with custom artwork, capacitive touch sensing buttons, and ultra-thin piezo speaker elements. Is this the largest single panel “badge” ever created? Joe will discuss his engineering process, the complex circuit board fabrication techniques used in the project — like laser-drilled via-in-pad and controlled depth routing — and the challenges he faced along the way. We can’t wait!
Workshops!
We have seven (7) amazing workshops planned for Saturday and Sunday, each with a ticket price of $15 and attendance limited to 20, and you should go sign up now at the main Supercon tickets page. We’ll also have a bonus badge workshop for as many people as we can fit in the room, led by badge creator and hardware hero Voja Antonic, and our own Adam Zeloof.
Build Your Own Phone with the Rephone Kit Create
Let’s get together and have a little fun while assembling your very own 2G phone. If you want to take your creation a step further after the assembly, bring your laptop with a micro-USB cable and I’ll show you how to upload your own ringtones and change the code.
Open Source RTOS on a Connected ePaper Badge
This workshop is to quickly get people building custom firmware using Zephyr, an open-source Real Time Operating System (RTOS). We will be programming a MagTag badge from Adafruit, a low-cost sensor platform that also has an ePaper display on it.
Beyond Arduino: Getting to “Blinky” (and beyond!) on a New Microcontroller
If you’ve ever wanted to use a development board that wasn’t “Arduino-compatible” but didn’t know how, this workshop is for you! Participants will learn how microcontrollers are programmed, which tools are needed, and where to find that information — all while starting to build their own project with an STM32 microcontroller.
Motion Reactive LED Wearables
Workshop participants will build an LED headband (can be adapted to a hat) based on the Seeeduino XIAO nrf52840 Sense microcontroller which contains an accelerometer and microphone. Using the CircuitPython LED Animation library framework, they will learn to create and adapt motion responsive animations.
Build a portable directional antenna
Amateur Operators KN6KZF & K6EAU (a.k.a. Rikke & Beau) enjoy cruising the air waves as a conveniently socially distanced hobby. They have enjoyed reaching out from lighthouses, mountain tops, national parks and even via the International Space Station. Combining the fun of geocaching, balloons and radios has led to a great way to spend time together and get outdoors both launching and recovering various devices. Most recently that involved running Ground Control for Parachute Mobile Mission 42 while 3 skydivers made successive jumps to make both VHF and HF radio contacts while descending from over 10,000 feet under chute.
Cat-Themed Soldering & USB Hacking Workshop! (Build a USB Nugget)
Want to build your own cat-shaped hacking tool and learn how hackers exploit unlocked computers in seconds? You’ll learn to solder our “USB Nugget” circuit board kit, and walk away from this workshop with the resources & knowledge to create your own USB attacks on our cute, cat-themed platform!
Tiny Tapeout – design your own chip and get it made!
In this workshop, you will get the opportunity to design and have manufactured your own design on an ASIC!
You will learn: The basics of digital logic, the basics of how semiconductors are designed and made, how to use an online digital design tool to build and simulate a simple design, and how to create the GDS files for manufacture on the open source Sky130 PDK.
Participants will have the option to submit their designs to be manufactured on the next shuttle as part of the Tiny Tapeout project.
Participants will need a laptop, and that’s it.
Will any of the workshops happen at the same time? I don’t see the one about RTOS, and there is one listed for Paul Beech, not listed here.
None of the workshops overlap, and those should be updated by now.
Saturday 1-3 and 3-5 have two workshops each scheduled. Luckily, I didn’t pick workshops that happen at the same time. The portable directional antenna workshop is right up my alley. I should bring a radio, too. (connectors and antenna SWR meter) I am bringing too much and have to reduce the number of things. :-)
Saturday 1:00 – 3:00 Workshops Together in Electric Dreams and Motion Reactive LED Wearables
Saturday 3:00 – 5:00 Workshops Build a portable directional antenna and Beyond Arduino: getting to “Blinky” (and beyond!) on a New Microcontroller
Just a comment on [Christina Cyr]’s hair.
Wow!
I’m guessing that [Kingpin]’s helmet is foil lined?
B^)