The Pacific Hackers Badge

The Design

Pacific Hackers co-founder Marco wanted to make a badge for their 4th edition of the Pacific Hackers Conference. Keeping their brand name in mind, it had to do with California's beautiful nature and local hacker community while I also wanted to turn it into a character. And so we arrived at California's state animal and it happened to resemble a lot of virtues Pacific Hackers is representing.

A female grizzly bear in the backdrop of Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California ticked all the virtues. Fierce yet protective. Lonely yet powerful. Brute force yet clever.

The badge needed to have 2 key elements -

• CTF for people to play.
• Way to socialise by tapping the badges against each other.

So the ribbon, sunglasses and headphones LEDs would be dedicated to CTF challenges while the outer border series of 8 LEDs on each side would glow as the badge socialises more and taps with more new people.

Moving forward with the production...

A brief magic of UV Printing later...

CTF Mode

The badge comes with a USB-C Port for a quick CTF interface. In default mode, the badge's outer border LEDs glow from bottom to top motion.

Simply turn OFF the switch, connect your USB C cable, fire up Arduino, select the right port and jump into the serial monitor.

In the event, Arduino doesn't detect serial connection, flip the USB-C connection tip or try a different cable. For detailed instructions, refer to our documentation here.

Serial Monitor settings are 9600 baud with Both NL & CR.

Sending *** puts the badge into CTF mode. There are 3 puzzles each unlocking the the sunglasses, headphones and ribbon. Puzzles can be solved in any order by typing their number into the serial monitor. To reset the badge, disconnect and reconnect the badge and send the RESET command.

Socialise Mode

The badge comes with a unique mechanism of Reed Switch - an electromechanical switch that can be operated by applying the magnetic field. Invented in 1922, it consists of a pair of ferromagnetic flexible metal leads in a sealed glass tube. Usually, the metal leads remain disconnected in an open position. When a magnetic force is applied to it, the leads close thereby forming a connection. When the magnetic force is removed, the leads in the reed switch return to their original position.

Each badge comes with 1 Reed Switch and a couple of tiny magnets placed around it to form an easy seamless connection with other badges. When a badge is made to hover above another badge, it latches onto the magnets instantly making a connection and glowing one LED on each side of the outer border for each tap.

The badge remembers both the CTF mode and Socialise mode LEDs even if the cable is disconnected or the badge is turned off. Happy Hacking!