Two years ago the EMF hacker camp in the UK released a new kind of event badge. The Tildagon was designed to be a recurring event badge, useful for the next EMF rather than destined to be e-waste. With the 2026 event coming up there’s a new Tildagon called the Spaceagon, and as you might expect it’s very familiar indeed.
Tildagon owners can update their badge with the Spaceagon front panel (Update — The EMF badge team would like us to inform you that the final badge art will differ from the prototype badge shown), while those without one can buy the new badge. It has a few minor updates from its predecessor, including better buttons, LEDs, and display mounting, and there’s a compass, a joystick, and touch sensitive areas.
The Tildagon introduced its own add-on format, the Hexpansion. This year there’s the first official Hexpansion, a keyboard, using the same rubber moulding we see on quite a few maker projects. We like the Hexpansion idea because it uses an edge connector rather than a set of pins on the device, but at the cost of more expensive badge parts.
If you’re going to EMF you should be able to order yourself a Spaceagon, or an upgrade kit if you already own a Tildagon. Meanwhile we covered the 2024 version back when it arrived, and surprisingly this isn’t the first keyboard add-on for it either.
Pity you can’t buy one off-site.
I would take two, each with kbd extension.
The same would go for all badges.
I cannot attend any convention yet and having the choice to buy a badge (from the organisers directly, not second hand) would be nice.
Why not design your own? It’s not that complex nowadays with all the fancy tools and the cheap pcb fabfactories that can even do assembly.
While I appreciate the “anyone can do anything” sentiment, it’s also a bit ignorant in the direction of what it takes to do badge development and what it means to produce something that other people want to own themselves. You could argue that the files are out there and that it is open source, but acquiring parts and soldering these badges (or getting them soldered) takes another skillset. Plus it’s way more expensive for a single person to produce 5 on your own vs getting 2000 produced with sponsored parts – something you also have to negotiate first.
You could, of course – out of spite to my response – try to run a batch and sell them on lectronz or tindie to prove me wrong and then everybody wins :)
I like the look of that keyboard. They sell it for 8.50 uk pounds (about 10 euro), but only to EMF ticket holders. So I guess there is some sponsoring money in it.
But I would be very interested to know how it was made, what materials (e.g. is it silicone?). Or is it like a modified xbox chatpad, where you just buy the cheap chatpad, make PCBs for bottom, mid layer and top (with milled cutouts for the keys) and only reuse the silicon keypad?
Hey, the keyboard rubberpad and dome sticker are from solder.party, designed by Arturo182. You can get them from lectronz, plus all footprints you need. He gets them produced in big batches and sells them very cheap, which allows for small runs of projects for everyone. It was also part of the WHY2025 camp badge and the tanmatsu. You can definitely find more documentation and history on the solder.party page.
The TL:DR about how this hexpansion happened is: EMF badge team came up to arturo and asked if he could design an addon, he was busy with the hackaday supercon badge keyboard and I was sitting there and suggested that I could try to whip something up.
Thanks a million for that info!
It’s probably worth emphasising that this is a preproduction prototype with joke art. The actual 2026 badges will have different artwork on them, but that’s not revealed until camp.
The EMF badge team do this every time, the website at https://tildagon.badge.emfcamp.org/ has last year’s final badge at the top, and the joke prototype below. If it’s got cats all over the front, it’s a prototype.