I realise I’ve been writing here on the Tindie blog for a while now! So much so that I now look forward to new products from specific makers, none more so than Bradán Lane. Bradán has for numerous years produced the eChallengeCoin series, which has been a spectacular set of coin-sized boards which have contained quite astonishing puzzles, games and text adventures featuring the excellent Sara Cladlow character, a social contractor with a penchant for security investigations. This year it’s the Explorer Badge and it’s slightly different
You’ll notice that this year’s badge isn’t called an “eChallengeCoin” over on the product page Bradán describes that they wanted to create a device which could function as this year’s challenge but also be a platform for STEM/STEAM learning with a more advanced feature set and hardware options. The Explorer badge has a text-based Sara Cladlow game, “Sara and the Dark Labyrinth” onboard, but is a Python and CircuitPython development board in its own right with heaps of additional hardware. Behind the glorious ePaper display, there are Neopixels, touch sensors, IR receive and transmit, a speaker driver and more.
LiPo is charging on board, but you need to supply your own LiPo cell. The fully assembled Explorer Badge also comes with a smart branded lanyard which also doubles as a USB C – USB A and lightening connector all in one. We look forward to seeing people playing with these out in the wild.
