A prototype is a preliminary model of something. Projects that offer physical products need to show backers documentation of a working prototype. This gallery features photos, videos, and other visual documentation that will give backers a sense of what’s been accomplished so far and what’s left to do. Though the development process can vary for each project, these are the stages we typically see:

Our Story

Hey there neck beards! AND!XOR here to tell you about the indie badge we are making for DEFCON 25.

So who or what is AND!XOR? We make stuff. We drink beer. In no particular order. This includes Zapp, Lacostaef, Andrewnriley, Bitstr3m, and Hyr0n. Were a hacker group that focuses on hardware, firmware, software, and overall security research. Most of all, we love blinky conference badges...and booze...but mostly making badges while enjoying booze.

If you don't know what we mean by conference badges....Most security conferences come with some kind of electronic printed circuit board badge that you wear with a lanyard. Way better than the stupid "Hello My Name Is" sticker. It usually has blinking LEDs, games, crypto puzzles, something that our hacker crowd loves. And the epicenter of these events is at Las Vegas every year: DEFCON.

DC has their own official badge crafted by LosT (a super human crypto PCB god among 400lb basement hackers), and every year, #badgelife hacker groups like us have an unofficial match to show off their hardware hacking skills and roll their own badges.

We did this last year at DC24. Started a hackaday page (this is last years, dont confuse with this year). Got some followers. Made about 175 of these Bender badges to sell off and drink booze with all of you...lots of booze. And then we had hundreds of people show up and we sold out of them in like, 10 minutes. We were overwhelmed by your response and couldn't feel more humble about the experience. You guys really have no idea. So for this years con, we got some feedback from the interweb tr0ll5 and we here's what we are planning, for the badge known as Bender:

Bender has better, hackable comms: were running a Rigado BMD300 SoC, based on the Nordic Nrf52 architecture. It supports Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), giving you the power to interact with other badges and roll your own analyzer. Make a stop at the IoT village and give Mike Ossman a beer while you are there.

Bender has more LEDs, more bling, and a color screen: we're running a beautiful color screen at twice the pixel density delivering over 100 color animations to the badge. In addition to adding more color LEDs, last year’s RGB neopixels have made a resilient return. This delivers better performance and color, allowing you to look stylish as you stand in line.

Bender has more games: to fit the retro hacker theme of DC25, we decided to custom roll a CHIP8(COSMAC-VIP) and SuperCHIP (HP48SX) emulator with 2^6 public domain roms included (thats 64 incase you were drunk in math class).

There will also be a major badge to badge multiplayer game planned as well, but the details of that we’re keeping under wraps until the con gets closer.

But more importantly, the best feature, more Benders: Since we sold out of these last year so fast and we want to make sure more people get a chance to have one and put these badges in your hands ahead of time...err around your neck..whatever. Gotta free your hands up for beer and hacking. DC25 is expected to have 30,000 in attendance this year so less than 1% of folks will get these. Our goal is to try and make an awesome hackable conference badge, filled with games and bling, many easter eggs, and extra features (which we are keeping close to the vest for now)

So where are we now? We have a silkscreen and PCB design which we feel is very Vegas with its Hunter S Thompson theme, very Bender, and very DEFCON.

The prototypes are in and working great. And we'll be finalizing our software baseline over the next few months. But we need your help. Producing these is an economy of scale. We have to make so many of them to get the cost down, but we can’t afford to do this by ourselves. By helping us reach our goal, you can make this badge a reality and guarantee you get one if you back us with AND!XOR 3@rly 8!rd 8@dge or f1l7hy 400lb h4ck3r ph1l4n7htr0p157. Whether it’s in between conference talks, hacking in the villages, beard competition, freak show, or just boozing wherever, we’ll want to hang out and know what you think.

Help us get these to DC25 before it gets cancelled and make it special. Thank you.

BADGE HARDWARE SPECS

Rigado BMD-300 SoC

Nordic NRF52, ARM Cortex M4F

Blast Processing

512kb flash, 64kb ram

BLE 4.2, ANT, NFC

Integrated Antenna

128x128 1.44” color LCD

19 FPS video over 8 Mhz SPI bus (and maybe m0ar?)

15X WS2812B LEDs AKA “Neopixel”

Tilt and Ambient light sensors

30% better power management (so far 30mA draw during Bling mode)

SECRET - COMPONENT (WILL REVEAL LATER)

Note: Prototype displayed has test points and soldered headers. The final version will not have test points or JTAG headers, but the footprint will exist. Also the actual components are subject to change by final production, equivalent functionality, but we may find improvements which require a swap (e.g. in the video we show APA102C Dotstar LEDs, and we decided to go with the NeoPixels instead).

BADGE FUNCTIONS

STRETCH GOAL

Help us get to $7000 and all backers receiving a badge reward (AND!XOR 3@rly 8!rd 8@dge or f1l7hy 400lb h4ck3r ph1l4n7htr0p157) will also get a ceramic poker chip! A great way to remember our special badge for DC25...before its cancelled.

Misc Details & Errata

(Q) July is pretty close to DC when will these ship?

(A) We are planning the week of 3 July, with USPS flat rate 2 day shipping. It should be in your hands 2 weeks prior, which for those who attend Blackhat as well, means you will have it in time for both!

(Q) Will you still sell these in Vegas?

(A) Yes. The KS campaign helps us get the manufacturing off the ground so we can produce more of them and sell some in person. We prefer that anyway because we like meeting everyone and crackin' a b33r.

(Q) What will they cost outside the KS campaign?

(A) We're unsure yet. That's dependent upon how much funding we raise through backers. They will be a bit cheaper in person. But you again run the risk of not being able to get one. Which is why we are asking you back us in an exchange for a reward instead. Also the extra cost is helping us get production off the ground to make these exist in the first place.

(Q) Where will updates be posted?

(A) On our Hackaday page, but we will post on KS linking to the updates. You should follow the project on Hackaday as well, check out the history of the project thus far.

(Q) What OS are you running?

(A) Ummm..none. Aside from the Nordic softdevice and an open source library for (SECRET), we wrote all the firmware, apps, GUI, etc ourselves.

(Q) Will you open source this?

(A) Of Course! Right after the con is over source code, gerbers, and supporting scripts will go up on GitHub.

(Q) I think you're full of BS, why are you keeping the majority of the features a secret?

(A) Your mom's full of BS. Like we said, the badge-makers are all trying to cook up their own unique surprise for everyone. You don't want to show your hand this early (poor Vegas pun, we know). We will release them over the next few months as the con gets closer. All we can promise is this, it will be in line with the retro throwback theme of DC25...

Shout Outs & Thanks Thus Far