Awkward_ai's Shitty Add-On Collection for Defcon 26 (post Defcon 26, updated 3/4/19)

I couldn’t move to start working on Defcon 27 badge until I finished this guide to the Defcon 26 Galaxia Wizard Badge for Harbinger LTD. 

This was meant to be a prototype testing board. I tried to build a lot of different footprints to be as flexible as possible. 

Many people who received this badge didn’t understand what to do with it. Some people thought it was missing parts. Others wanting a fully built version. Even though I pointed people to the gerber files to think through a design - I realize an annotated guide was needed (and many asked me for it)..

So here it is. A few notes about this badge:

0. I divided the notes across 2 sections in the same area: 

A.  Rail systems and potentiometers.

B.  Chip footprints and exposed pad pinouts.

1. Once I sat down to make some sense of this I realized that 5 connections on the badge were not connected (this has been noted on the diagram).

2. I did not sell these, they were given out as a freebie for purchasing my shitty add-on’s. 

3. It was originally intended to be a synth running on 555 timers - and later versions will be - but this version I decided to leave open ended. 

4. The exposed copper was meant to be value inputs for a stylus type device (think stylophone). 

5. The rails along these connectors (left hand side), were meant to run +/- power to these exposed pads. 

6. The stylus would complete the circuit. 

7. I included the gap for resistors to change the values on the pads.

8. The pinout for the NodeMCU slot moves inward so wire the pinout before making the MCU connections. Otherwise you will not be able to solder the pinouts.

9. I wanted to make something that could satisfy as many possible designs as possible. I tested 3 totally different schematics on this design and I was able to make:

A. An Atari Punk console using 2, 555 timer chips, potentiometers, resistors, and capacitors with a 9v battery.  

B. A Shitty Add-On holder. Made by soldering a 3v coin cell holder onto the exposed stars and running power to the sets of rails labeled X, Y, Z. 

C. A honeypot using a NodeMCU and ssd1306 lcd screen. Ran ssd1306 on rails A,B,C,D. Powered by external battery pack.

If you have any extra questions let me know. I won’t be selling these individually, only with my Shitty Add-On sets. 

A few notes about Defcon 26:

1. It was my second Defcon and my first ever making electronic badges. 

2. I got to meet other badge makers and learn from them, important takeaways being:

A. Time, start as early as possible. 

B. Seriously, you will end up sacrificing features if you don’t have enough time. 

C. There is always someone who will be impressed by your work even if you aren’t.  

3. I severely underestimated the number of people who know how to solder; I grew up fixing my own electronics, it was easier to me than coding was even though I did both. I brought both kits and fully assembled shitty add-ons, The instructions for the kits were printed on black and white as I was leaving the house - they were not great instructions but I did as much as I could to get people the info they needed, Including posting color pictures of the badges. This seemed to work well given the circumstances. 

4. Sell your badges before you arrive. I can’t accurately explain the pressure of selling badges out of your backpack when you have 900 more sitting in your hotel room and terrified of paying to ship them back home. I spent entirely too much time selling and not doing what I wanted to do. I plan to fix this for DC27. 

5. I did not have most of these soldered until I arrived in Vegas, I shipped all my parts and entire workspace out here. I’d wake up and start soldering and testing until I had enough to fill my backpack...

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