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Hack the North built 1,750 programmable PCB badges

va3ndf.com 19 min read Editor score 7/10

The badges combined a screen, buttons and radio, and attendees programmed them into projects such as a game; the hardware, firmware and emulator are open source. The build offers practical event-scale hardware and firmware lessons, though it is peripheral to AI systems.

What

- Hack the North replaced cardstock event badges with programmable circuit boards featuring a screen, buttons, and a radio.

How

- The team shipped four iterations, with the fourth as the production run; the first design worked on USB but not battery power.

Why it matters

- Iteration and a fallback to blank badges helped de-risk manufacturing cost and battery-safety concerns.

Read on va3ndf.com → Hacker News · 12 comments

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