Supercon is the Ultimate Hardware Conference and you need to be there! Just check out this roster of talks that will be going down. We’ve got something for everyone out there in the Hackday universe, from poking at pins, to making things beautiful, to robots, radios, and FPGAs. And this isn’t even half of the list yet.
We’ve got a great mix of old favorites and new faces this year, and as good as they are, honestly the talks are only half of the fun. The badge hacking, the food, the brainstorming, and just the socializing with the geekiest of the geeky, make it an event you won’t want to miss. If you don’t have tickets yet, you can still get them here.
Plus, this year, because Friday night is Halloween, we’ll be hosting a Sci-Fi-themed costume party for those who want to show off their best props or most elaborate spacesuits. And if that is the sort of thing that you’re into, you will absolutely want to stay tuned to our Keynote Speaker(s) announcement in a little while. (Spoiler number one.)
Probing Pins for Protocol Polyglots
This talk explores stacking multiple protocols, like UART, SPI, and I2C, onto the same GPIO pins by exploiting undefined “don’t care” regions. Learn how to bitbang several devices at once, creating protocol polyglots without extra hardware.
Sandbox Systems: Hardware for Emergent Games
From Conway’s Game of Life to cyberpunk bounty hunting in the desert, this talk explores how thoughtful design in tech and hardware can lead to human connection and community. Elli Furedy shares lessons from years of building hardware and running an immersive experience at the event Neotropolis.
Cracking Open a Classic DOS Game
Take a nostalgic and technical deep dive into The Lawnmower Man, a quirky full-motion video game for DOS CD-ROM. We’ll explore the tools and techniques used to reverse-engineer the game, uncover how it was built, and wrap things up with a live demo on original hardware.
Beyond RGB: The Illuminating World of Color & LEDs
RGB lighting is everywhere and allows any project to display millions of unique colors. This talk explores the physiology of the human eye that allows RGB to be so effective, when alternatives are better, and how to choose the right lighting for your project.
What Makes a Robot Feel Alive?
This talk dives into the art and engineering of programming personality into pet robots, crafting behaviors, reactions, and quirks that turns a pile of parts into a companion with presence. Learn design tips, technical insights, and lessons from building expressive bots that blur the line between hardware and character.
Hacked in Translation: Reverse Engineering Abandoned IoT Hardware
This talk takes us on a tour of adventures reviving an abandoned IoT “AI” translator, 2025-style. From decoding peculiar protocols to reverse engineering firmware & software, discover how curiosity and persistence can breathe new life into forgotten hardware and tackle obscure technical challenges.
Optical Espionage: Lasers to Keystrokes
We’ll learn how to identify what a target is typing from a distance through a window with an advanced laser microphone capable of converting infrared to vibrations to radio back to sound, and the electrical, optical, radio, and software components needed for cutting-edge eavesdropping.
Cal Poly NerdFlare: Bringing #badgelife to Academia
A small experiment with PCB art and interactive badges became a campus-wide creative movement. Hear how students combined art, technology, and real-world tools to build community, develop skills, and create projects that are as accessible as they are unforgettable.
Off the Grid, On the Net: Exploring Ham Radio Mesh Networks.
This talk dives into using outdoor wireless access points to join a ham radio mesh network (ham net). Learn how services like weather stations, video streams, email, and VOIP are run entirely over the mesh, without needing commercial internet, all within FCC Part 97 rules.
LEDs Get Into Formation: Mechanically Interesting PCB Assemblies
This talk discusses a range of projects built from custom LED PCBs combined into two and three dimensional structures. Explores methods of connecting them into creative arrangements, both static and flexible, including the “Bendy SAO” which won a prize at Supercon 2024.
Rad Reverb: Cooking FPGAs with Gamma Rays
This talk presents research on destructive testing of commercial off-the-shelf (CoTS) FPGAs using cobalt-60 and cesium-137 radiation to study failure modes and resilience in high-radiation environments. Learn about a novel in-situ measurement method that allows real-time observation of integrated circuits during exposure, capturing transient faults and degradation without interrupting operation.
Aurora Blue
Earth’s magnetic field is glitching out. Phones fail, satellites drop, auroras flood the skies. This talk dives into Aurora Blue, which imagines this future through post-digital imaging hacks: cyanotype prints exposed by custom light-field instruments that flow like auroras. Deep-blue works built to endure, sky relics you can hold after the cloud crashes.
Workshop News, and another Spoiler
Sadly, we’ve got to announce that the Meshtastic workshop with Kody Kinzie will not be taking place. But Spoiler Number Two is that the badge this year will have all of the capabilities of that project and much, much more. If you’re into LoRA radio, meshes, and handheld devices, you’ll want to watch out for our badge reveal in the upcoming weeks.
Oh, and go get your tickets now before it’s too late. Supercon has sold out every year, so you can’t say that we didn’t tell you.
Wow that’s a lot of speakers!
“And this isn’t even half of the list yet.”
Yeah, holy cow…