Being more of a hardware guy, I’m always excited to see what hardware hacks are on display at Defcon (the annual hacking convention), starting with my MAKE colleague Joe Grand’s Defcon badges. This year’s is a swanky, modern number with a matrix of 95 surface-mounted LEDs and two touch-sensitive buttons. The badge uses a Freescale MC9S08QG8 MCU and has provisions on the PCB for a serial connector, an accelerometer, and a ZigBee wireless chip (all of which are available at the con).
Programmer and photographer Dave Bullock has some details on his blog about soldering on a connector and hooking his badge up to a laptop to mod the display code. He also has links to the Wired coverage of Defcon (Dave’s doing the photogs), including images of Joe Grand’s blinged-out “Uber” badge. Show off 🙂
