A Look At All The Badge Hacks Of Supercon 2023

For those of you who’ve had the opportunity to join us in Pasadena for Supercon, you’ll know it’s a wild ride from start to finish. Singling out a single moment as our favorite is pretty much impossible, but certainly the Sunday Badge Hacking Ceremony has to rank up there. It’s the culmination of ~78 hours of intense hardware and software hacking, and that’s not even counting the pre-show work that attendees often put into their creations. Every year, without fail, this community manages to pull off badge hacks that are beyond anything we could have imagined — and we’re the ones who made the thing in the first place.

Unfortunately, in the mad rush, we’ve never had a chance to actually photograph the hacked badges and share them with the Hackaday readers. This year, at the urging of some of the badge hackers themselves, we were able to throw together a suitable overhead light at the last minute and actually snapped shots of each badge after it was presented to the audience.

The resulting images, sorted by badge hacking category, are below. While some proved difficult to photograph, especially with an impromptu setup, we’re happy to at least have a complete record of this year’s creations. Hopefully we’ll be able to improve on our technique for 2024 and beyond. If yours shows up, or if you’d like to share your appreciation, sound off in the comments below!

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Supercon And Soylent Green

The 2023 Hackaday Supercon is all done and dusted, and we’re still catching up on our sleep. I couldn’t ask everyone, but a great time was had by everyone I talked to. It’s honestly a very special crowd that shows up in Pasadena every November, and it’s really the attendees who make it what it is. We just provide the platform to watch you shine. Thank you all!

It all started out on Friday with an open day of chilling out and badge experimentation. Well, chill for those of you who didn’t have a bug in their badge code, anyway. But thanks to some very keen observation and fantastic bug reports by attendees, Al and I figured out what we’d done and pushed a fix out to all 300 of the badges that were given out on the first day. And thanks to the remaining 200 folks who walked in the next day, who fixed their own badges at Tom’s Flashing Station.

From then on, it was one great talk after another, punctuated by badge hacks and all the other crazy stuff that people brought along with them to show off. For me, one of the highlights was on Sunday morning, as the Lightning Talks gave people who were there a chance to get up and talk about whatever for seven minutes. And subjects ranged from a mad explosive propane balloon party, to Scotty Allen’s experience with a bad concussion and how he recovered, to a deep dive into the world of LED strands and soft sculptures from our go-to guru of blinkiness, Debra [Geek Mom] Ansell.

Supercon first-timer Katie [Smalls] Connell gave a phenomenal talk about her wearable LED art things, Spritelights. These are far from simple art pieces, being a combination of medical adhesive, home-mixed Galinstan – a metal alloy that stays flexible at human body temperature, and soon even flexible printed batteries. That this whole project hit us without warning from out of the audience just made it more impressive.

And these were just the folks who stepped up on stage. The true story of Supercon also belongs to all the smaller conversations and personal demos taking place in the alley or by the coffee stand. Who knows how many great ideas were hatched, or at least seeds planted?

So as always, thank you all for coming and bringing your passions along with. Just like Soylent Green, Supercon is made of people, and it wouldn’t be half as yummy without you. See you all next year. And if you’re thinking of joining us, get your tickets early and/or submit a talk proposal when the time comes around. You won’t meet a more warm and welcoming bunch of nerds anywhere.

Hackaday Podcast 243: Supercon, Super Printing, And Super Gyros

With solder fumes from Supercon still in the air, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Al Williams met to compare notes about the conference talks, badge hacking, and more. Tom Nardi dropped by, too.

Did you miss Supercon? It isn’t quite the whole experience, but most of the talks are on our YouTube channel, with more coming in the weeks ahead. Check out the live tab for most of the ones up now. You can even watch the badge hacking celebration. We’ll be writing up more in the following weeks.

Al nailed What’s That Sound, as did many others, except Elliot. [Jacx] gets a T-shirt, and you get a chance to play again next week.

The hacks this week range from a pair of posts pertaining to poop — multi-color 3D printer poop, that is. We wondered if you could print rainbow filament instead of a purge tower. The Raspberry Pi 5 draws a lot of excess power when in standby. Turns out, thanks to the Internet, the easy fix for that is already in. Other hacks range from EMI test gear to portable antennas with excursions into AI, biomedical sensors, and retrocomputing.

In the Can’t Miss category, we discussed Maya Posch’s post, which could just as easily be titled: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about CAT Cable (But Were Afraid to Ask). Last, but not least, you’ll hear about Lewin Day’s round up of exotic gyroscope technology, including some very cool laser pictures.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Download for listening or for a very long ringtone.

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Supercon 2023 Is On: Live

Supercon is in full swing! If you weren’t able to join us in person, we’re streaming the main stage and you should absolutely check out the talks as they happen.

The full schedule is here, and you’ll find all the streams over on our YouTube channel. Come join in the fun.

For those of you are here with us in Pasadena, we’ve got a signup form for anyone who wants to submit a Lightening Talk for Sunday.

Hint: absolutely don’t miss Cory Doctorow’s keynote speech, taking place at 10:00 AM Pacific.

A woman with a black vest and pink shirt with curly hair stands behind a podium in front of a projected presentation. She is speaking and has her hands moving in a vague guesture.

Supercon 2022: Carrie Sundra Discusses Manufacturing On A Shoestring Budget

Making hardware is hard. This is doubly true when you’re developing a niche hardware device that might have a total production run in the hundreds of units instead of something mass market. [Carrie Sundra] has been through the process several times, and has bestowed her wisdom on how not to screw it up.

The internet is strewn with the remains of unfulfilled crowdfunding campaigns for tantalizing devices that seemed so simple when they showed of the prototype. How does one get something from the workbench into the world without losing their life savings and reputation?

[Sundra] walks us through her process for product development that has seen several products successfully launch without an army of pitchfork-wielding fiber crafters line up at her door. One of the first concepts she stresses is that you should design your products around the mantra, “Once it leaves your shop IT SHOULD NEVER COME BACK.” If you design for user-serviceability from the beginning, you can eliminate most warranty returns and probably make it easier to manufacture your widget to boot. Continue reading “Supercon 2022: Carrie Sundra Discusses Manufacturing On A Shoestring Budget”

Render of the shell pictured standing on the pavement, with shell parts printed in white and button parts printed in orange

Packing For Supercon? Here’s A Printable Case For Your Badge

Hackaday Supercon 2023 is a week away, and if you’re still thinking about the equipment you need to take with you, here’s something you’ll want to print – a case for the Supercon 2023 badge that you will find inside of your goodie bag. This year’s Supercon badge is a gorgeous analog playground board we call Vectorscope, powered by an RP2040, MicroPython, and a ton of love for all of the creativity that we’ve seen you bunch express through the wonders of analog electronics. There’s a round LCD screen, SMD buttons galore, as well as some pokey through-hole headers, and if you’ve carried a badge around, you know that all of these can be a bit touchy! You’re in luck, though – just in time, [T.B. Trzepacz] brings us a 3D-printed shell.

Over on Hackaday Discord, we’ve been watching this shell go through multiple iterations throughout the past few days – the initial design pics appeared almost as soon as we published the PCB files for the badge! Yesterday, [T.B. Trzepacz] dropped by the Design Lab where we’ve been putting finishing touches on the badges, and armed with the real-world PCBs, made the final tweaks to the design – then gave us the go-ahead to spread the word.

This shell is practical but elegant and does a mighty fine job protecting both the badge and the wearer. Nothing is hidden away, from the buttons to the expansion headers, and the lanyard holes keep it wearable. At this time, grab the Basic 2 files – these should work for SLA and FDM printers alike, and they’re tolerant enough even for FDM printers below average. Pick your favourite color scheme, or go for one of the transparent SLA resins, and when you arrive at the Supercon, you’ll have a case you can rely on.

Want to give this case your own spin? Perhaps a Pip-Boy aesthetic or a Vectrex console vibe? Should you want to modify anything, the Fusion360 sources are right there, open-source as they ought to be. It’s been a pleasure watching this case design grow, and in case you’re looking to hire a skilled engineer in Berlin, [T.B. Trzepacz] is looking for work!

2023 Hackaday Supercon: Cory Doctorow Signs On As Keynote Speaker

As if you weren’t already excited enough about the speakers and events that will be part of this year’s Hackaday Supercon, today we can finally reveal that journalist, activist, author, technologist, and all around geek Cory Doctorow will be presenting the keynote address on Saturday morning.

Cory has always been an outspoken supporter of digital freedom, from helping develop OpenCola in 2001 as a way to explain the concepts behind free and open source software, to his more recent work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He’s made his novels available for purchase directly from his personal website in DRM-free file formats, and he’s even developed a habit of releasing some of them for free under the Creative Commons license. The hacker ethos is strong with this one.

Over the last year, he’s been particularly vocal about what he calls Enshittification — the inevitable decay of any online service where the users are, whether they realize it or not, the product. It’s a concept that’s perfectly exemplified by the ongoing slow-motion implosion of Twitter, and Reddit’s increasingly hostile treatment of its community. Cory explains that one of the signposts on this particular journey is when user-created tools, such as web scrapers or bots, are banned by the powers that be. Reverse engineering, especially when it can uncover a way out of the Walled Garden, is strictly forbidden.

Luckily, there’s a way out. Cory will be delivering his talk An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse, not only to those who will be physically attending Supercon, but to the entire Hackaday community via our live YouTube stream of the event. It’s a presentation that’s critically important to an audience such as ours — while nearly anyone with an Internet connection can appreciate the problem he’s describing, hackers and makers are in a unique position to actually do something about it. Following the principles Cory will detail in his talk, we can build services and networks that actually respect their users rather than treating them like the enemy.

It Won’t Be Long Now

By the time this post hits the front page of Hackaday, there will be slightly more than a week to go before several hundred of our best friends descend on the city of Pasadena for Supercon. We recently unveiled the Vectorscope badge, dropped two posts listing off all of this year’s presenters, and offered up a list of fascinating workshops. The stage is now officially set for what we consider, as humbly as possible, to be the greatest gathering of hardware hackers, builders, engineers, and enthusiasts in the world. Check out the schedule and plan your Supercon ahead of time.

Tickets for the 2023 Hackaday Supercon are, perhaps unsurprisingly, completely sold out. But you can still add your name to the wait list on Eventbrite, which will put you in the running to grab any returned tickets should somebody have to back out at the last minute. Failing that, there’s always 2024.


Featured Image: Copyright Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud (JUCO), www.jucophoto.com/, CC BY-SA 2.0