If you didn’t go to the Hackaday SuperConference in Pasadena, California back in November, you missed out on a lot — but you also didn’t get one of these awesome hardware badges. Now you can buy one on Tindie! In the video below, Hackaday’s (and Tindie’s) Mike Szczys explains what it is and what it’s good for.
As you can see from the photo above, it has four buttons, and an LED matrix display. What’s not quite as obvious is that it is capable of 2-way infrared communication, has a 3-axis accelerometer, and can play Tetris if you just want relatively mindless fun. The whole thing is meant to be hacked and reprogrammed, and even includes a header on the back which you can use to attach outside peripherals. See just after 3:00 in the video below for an idea from one of the creators of the badge, Voja Antonic).
The video gives a good introduction as to what the badge is all about. If, however, you’d like to drill down into the guts of it even further, you can find more of its origin story on (where else?) Hackaday.com, and procure the design files on Hackaday.io. Chris Gammell also wrote an article about the process of manufacturing them if you’d like to know more about that aspect of the project.
