Badge Design 2009

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Contents 1 Summary of discussion at Thinkhaus on 20090901 1.1 Badge Brief 1.2 The basics 1.3 The ideal 1.4 The Plan 1.5 Current Status 1.6 TO DO 2 The Electronics 2.1 Price observations, thoughts, suggestions

Summary of discussion at Thinkhaus on 20090901

Badge Brief

Even though it's coming fast, we need to have an "admission" / souvenir badge for the inaugural event.

Ideally, we'd make use of more than one space's stuff/moola.

The badge should light up in some way (thematic adherence to Nuit Blanche)

The badge should do something cooler than just sit there and blink.

The basics

Without anything much more than basic skillz, we could make a badge that uses a battery, LED and a 555 timer to blink.

But.

We want more awesome.

The ideal

Ideally, in the same way that this year's DEFCON badge was really overshadowed by the Ninja Party badge... we need to do something completely better.

The Plan

Using a hybrid of acrylic and circuit board badge designs, we're hoping to produce the first easily hackable badge.

Take one part illuminated acrylic badge (see: [1] for details)

Add one part minimal arduino (see: [2] for details)

And some LEDs permanently connected to several of the PWM pins (see: [3] for details)

Foregoing the usual Arduino format in order to make it as cheap as possible to build

And merge them (hot glue!) into a single badge that can take care of itself - running one of the default blink programs - or that can be a rather standard Arduino with the addition of some connection wires from pads/holes to headers for shield attachment.

Sample hardware design (so you can prep an example if you want) is a Arduino Duemilanove with a momentary pushbutton on pin 12, a simple green LED on pin 13 and bright LEDs (indeterminate) on 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11

Current Status

Jason and Trevyn (thinkhaus) are working on a pcb prototype design for custom board building and pricing of components.

James is working on graphics (DONE - [4] black rect is 3xAAA pack and green square is circuit w/ LEDs) and specifications for the plastic to hand off to Seth for refinement and production of a sample.

James is working on a sample program for a standard arduino to do some basic blinky light things.

TO DO

Solicit (from a "frieND-A" group - who can keep quiet) additional programs for the sample hardware.

The Electronics

First approximation of the electronics: schematic, board

Part	Qty/bd	Cost/ea@100	Cost/bd@100	Digikey #
ATmega328P	1	$2.90	$2.90	ATMEGA328P-AU-ND
PCB	1	<$4	<$4	estimate
16 MHz crystal	1	$0.45	$0.45	490-1198-1-ND
Red 5 mm LEDs	2
Green 5 mm LEDs	2
Blue 5 mm LEDs	2
Status LED (yellow)	1	$0.08	$0.08	160-1170-1-ND
Button	2	$0.18	$0.36	EG4620CT-ND
Battery holder	1	$0.93	$0.93	SBH-431-1A-ND
AAA battery	3	$0.39	$1.17	P645-ND
Resistors	8
1 uF cap	1
		Total	$9.42

Cost is based on at least 100 boards.

Price observations, thoughts, suggestions

Feel free to ignore if you've already done your research!

Just in case it may help: I had my lxpl boards printed not too long ago from Speedy PCB. They were fast, good service, good quality.

For reference, the cost of a 8"x0.75" board (so 6 sq. in., bigger than the 2"x2" suggested here), quantity 150, green solder mask, with 10 day lead time was US$ 186, or US$ 1.24/each. Black solder mask raised it to US$ 1.43/each. With 5/6 day lead time, green was US$ 1.66/each, black US$ 1.86 each.