The NullByte Zombie Badge

The Idea

I was introduced to NullByte - a fabulous cybersecurity conference in Brazil by a dear friend Make It Hackin and with a quick brainstorming, the starting point for the design would be their iconic zombie artwork logo.

The Design

The artwork presents some unique elements to incorporate our LEDs and badge functionality. An actual USB port would be placed under one of the USBs in the design. Zombie's background had 7 holes where 7 SMD LEDs would fit. And the wire that connects to its head had to glow fancy to make it more interactive.

The background LEDs as well as zombie eye LEDs would be reverse mounted but glow through a tiny drilled hole on the PCB to make them as bright as possible. A USB-C port for CTF interfacing, a couple of coin cells for power, and all the components would be housed on the back of the badge.

UV Printing The Artwork

The conference wanted to have 3 different types of artworks for crew, speaker and special persons. So different artwork versions were tested.

Artwork Ideas

UV Print Test 1

The artwork prints nicely but the design elements seem to be losing their touch when compared to the original artwork.

Back to the drawing board...

We figured keeping the original colour scheme would be ideal as long as we can put small differentiation of badge types without losing its artistic charm.

A few iterations later...

Looked like we found our winner...

The artwork is UV printed and then layered with a varnish coating for additional durability and a smoother finish. Because the artwork is printed post components assembly, the LEDs got the artwork layer printed on top of them too, so the eyes had eyeballs in the same yellow colour but with some depth - which looks cool and feels like new elements in the same design.

BadgeCTF

The badge comes with a USB-C Port for a quick CTF interface. Simply turn off the badge, connect the USB-C cable, and fire up the serial monitor.

Putting Everything Together

The NullByte zombie is alive!

Pressing the push button key alternates between flashy mode vs. CTF show-off mode where the badge shows the number of challenges/LEDs solved.