Badgelife, The Hardware Demoscene Documentary

August 20, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

Last week, tens of thousands of people headed home from Vegas, fresh out of this year’s DEF CON. This was a great year for DEF CON, especially when it comes to hardware. This was the year independent badges took over, thanks to a small community of people dedicated to creating small-run hardware, puzzles, and PCB art for thousands of conference-goers. This is badgelife, a demoscene of hardware, and this is just the beginning. It’s only going to get bigger from here on out.

We were lucky enough to sit down with a few of the creators behind the badges of this year’s DEF CON and the interviews were fantastic. Right here is a lesson on electronic design, manufacturing, and logistics. If you’ve ever wanted to be an engineer that ships a product instead of a lowly maker that ships a product, this is the greatest classroom in the world.

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Breakfast At DEF CON — The Greatest Illicit Meetup Of All

August 16, 2018 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Every year we host Breakfast at DEF CON on the Sunday morning of the largest hacker conference in the United States. I think it’s a brilliant time to have a meetup — almost nobody is out partying on Sunday morning, and coffee and donuts is a perfect way to get your system running again after too much excess from Saturday evening.

This year marks our fourth Breakfast and we thought this time it would be completely legit. Before we’ve just picked a random coffee shop and showed up unannounced. But this year we synced up with some of our friends running the Hardware Hacking Village and they were cool with us using the space. Where we ran afoul was trying to wheel in coffee and pastries for 100+ people. The casino was having none it.

Great food went fast. This was an hour in and after another hour it was all gone.

We don’t mind mixing googly-eyes with flatware

Mmmmm… Coffee.

But to their credit, we were forbidden from bringing the food into the conference center, not into the greater casino. We ended up squatting in a restaurant seating area that wasn’t open until 5pm. The awesome Hackaday Community rolled with the venue change, and a fantastic time was had by all! For what it’s worth, this ended up being the best space for a Breakfast yet! There was plenty of room with many tables, and we had no problem filling all of the space.

“Most dropped parts” trophy for SMD soldering challenge

SMD soldering challenge under way

Tindie and Hackaday were sponsors of the SMD Challenge this year (a timed soldering challenge going all the way down to 0201 packages that was also judged for quality). Jasmine announced the winner live at the meetup, that’s the image at the top of this article. I thought the award the Solder Skills Village made for the Most Dropped Parts was pretty epic. It’s a round pendant with a piece of carpet and a bunch of components that was on display during the meetup.

Badges of DEF CON past

The number one piece of hardware people brought with them was badges. Since we’re doing in-depth badge coverage I won’t go into that here. But I’d like to mention that for the second year in a row, Brian McEvoy brought some epic hardware. Last year it was an OpenSCAD controller demo, this year it’s a custom mechanical keyboard design system.

Taking wide shots of crowds is frowned upon at DEF CON so what follows are posed shots. I made sure to ask all involved before snapping the image. DC27 is a long way away, I’m hoping to see many of these awesome folks much sooner than that when Supercon gets going this November.

Jasmine Brackett, Mike Szczys, Katie Huber, Erin Kosewic

Kerry Scharfglass, Mike Szczys, and Brian McEvoy

All The Badges Of DEF CON 26 (vol 1)

August 14, 2018 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Two or three years back you would see a handful of really interesting unofficial badges at DEF CON. Now, there’s a deluge of clever, beautiful, and well executed badges. Last weekend I tried to see every badge and meet every badge maker. Normally, I would publish one megapost to show off everything I had seen, but this year I’m splitting it into volumes. Join me after the break for the first upload of the incredible badges of DC26!

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Car Hacking At DEF CON 26

August 11, 2018 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

A great place to get your feet wet with the data-network-wonderland that is modern-day automobiles is the Car Hacking Village at DEF CON. I stopped by on Saturday afternoon to see what it was all about and the place was packed. From Ducati motorcycles to junkyard instrument clusters, and from mobility scooters to autonomous RC test tracks, this feels like one of the most interactive villages in the whole con.

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First Look At DEF CON 26 Official Badge

August 9, 2018 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

To the delight of everyone, this year’s official DEF CON badge is an electronic badge chock full of entertainment. Of course there is blinky, the board is artistic, and everyone hopefully maybe gets one (it’s rumored 27,000+ were manufactured) if they don’t run out. But the badge contest at DEF CON is legendary — solve all the puzzles you are awarded the coveted black badge.

The creators of this badge are no strangers to the Hackaday community. Displayed proudly on the board and in the firmware, we discover that The Toymakers are the ones who have put it all on this line this year. Kudos to the dynamic hardware collective from Minnesota. There is no larger pressure cooker in the world of badges than this, and they pulled it off marvelously. Let’s take a look at all the goodies inside.

Most importantly, become a team member of the Hackaday.io DC26 badge solving project page to help discover all that’s involved in this badge. Okay, now let’s dive in!

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Sunday: Breakfast At DEF CON

August 8, 2018 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

Nurse your hangover by having Breakfast at DEF CON this Sunday. You’re invited to this yearly ritual with Hackaday and Tindie. We’re celebrating the beginning of the end with coffee and pastries beginning at 10:30 am in the Hardware Hacking Village.

Head over to the Breakfast at DEF CON event page and hit the “follow event” button to keep on any new info about the event.

Extra internet points go to those who bring some hardware to show off… and especially for anyone who is making this the end of their Saturday rather than the beginning of Sunday. We had tons of great hacks show up last year and want to outdo ourselves this time around.

Come hang out with too many Hackaday and Tindie folks to list here. Also don’t forget to check out the SMD Challenge throughout the weekend.

Unofficial Badges Get Official Recognition At DEF CON: Badge Life Contest

August 3, 2018 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

Badge·Life (noun): the art of spending too much time, energy, money, and creativity to design and produce amazing custom electronics and get them into the hands of those who appreciate incredible craftsmanship.

Brand new to DEF CON 26 is the Badge Life Contest to celebrate the creativity and ingenuity that gets poured into a custom badge.

For years, #BadgeLife has been flying under the radar at DEF CON. A growing movement of creative designers have put in late nights, emptied pocket books, and agonized over production, shipping, lanyards, boxes, batteries, programming woes, and every other kind of problem you can image to bring hundreds of unofficial badges to the conference. These aren’t a secret, the whole point is to wear blinky badges, often loaded with cryptographic puzzles and wireless interactivity, around your neck. For many, acquiring an awesome badge is a must-do to make their con a successful one. But DEF CON hasn’t officially recognized BadgeLife, until now.

If you’re a badge creator, you should show off your badge as part of the contest. It’s an opportunity to let more people see all the details that make each badge a work of art. During the con, most people will only see badges as they walk past them in the hallway. For the contest, all badges will be on display in the Hardware Hacking Village during the weekend to provide a close look for everyone.

The judging panel for this is an incredible slate of talented and well-known people from the hardware community. It doesn’t look like those names have been made public yet, but I’m honored and humbled to be among them. Help kick this inaugural year of the Badge Life Contest off right. You can submit your badge information now and deliver one badge (which will be returned to you) for display by 5 pm PDT on Friday 8/10.