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 and then I’d hit the Con, when I ran out, I repeated the process. I didn’t sell everything I brought but I made back my initial costs (est. costs $2200 - $2500.. total sold $2600 - $3200) There is a variance because I was also buying other people badges with the money I made, I also wasn’t keeping track of what I was selling. I had to add up what I had left to figure out what I actually sold. 

6. I sold 60% of my product, gave away 5% to charity. The remaining 35% was meant to be barebones kits - maybe only one or two people wanted bare bones kits. I thought I could save some $$ by not buying all the parts I needed and letting people buy their own parts and build out the badges. No one wanted that shit. These leftover kits will be sold online and go into paying for Defcon 27. 

I am now concluding the DC26 project with the release of gerbers for public use. As of now I do not have plans to remake these for DC27.

OLDER (pre-Defcon Post)

I wanted to update this for those that are buying my kits. Tomorrow is the start of DEFCON and I won't be updating this again until after the con.

If you follow the fresh pictures I have uploaded (https://imgur.com/a/xsmKbKl) they should get you to where you want to be -- the one exception is the Brrr and Nic Cage badges, for those just know that the resistors with the black on one side are the 22k resistors. Everything else is really straightforward.

I have a handful of extra parts if you break something. Just add and dm me on Twitter at awkwardai. The build instructions for the kits were rushed as I was trying to catch my flight but this update should complete what was missing.


If you want to buy these, I will be at linecon Thursday am, and then soldering station, badgemaking areas intermittenly. Check twitter for my details and if there are any problems let me know. (some of you are missing the red led for calvin and I will have those too).

Thx

Once I got the hang of the Kicad software (thanks to TwinkleTwinkie and Chris Gammell, @TheAmpHour) I couldn't stop building shitty add-ons. I'm up to 10 or 11 at this point and once they are all verified and in the wild this post will be updated.

I got started with Twinkletwinkies 'How I make shitty add-ons' tutorial. The first one I made and ordered was the 

Shitty Calvin 

The original design only had two LEDs that were supposed to illuminate the stream of piss. This was not the case and I was faced with two options: 

1. Add the four LEDs needed to fill the area and hope that it worked. 

or

2. Animate the four LEDs to force an achieved affect. 

I might not be able to illuminate the area but I sure can animate it. It would be a more striking visual and it could double as a 4 step sequencer to interact with the Thereminion. 

When I started this I was not very good at smd soldering and didn’t want to make something with a skill level that would be too exclusionary - this ruled out smd ICs. I kept the smallest smd size at a 0810 and used them only where I could to shrink the overall footprint or maintain the aesthetic integrity (this would prove very hard with Calvin). 

Design notes:

V0.1: The initial idea was to have solid stream of pee. The spread of the LEDs was not enough to fill the desired area.

V0.2: Modified to use a 4017 operating on 3.3v to drive a stream of LED piss onto the badge. The design worked great but unfortunately the SAO connector was backwards. The addition of the extra chips heavily modified the overall look of the add-on. 

V0.3: I decided to lean into the robotic look of the badge. At my gfs suggestion I put exposed copper traces on the front to enhance the piss field aesthetic. I put a mounting hole over the eyehole in case you wanted to give him a terminator type look. (Included red LED that you can attach behind and shine through ;). This was a last minute addition and was barely tested so I won’t include it in documentation.

BOM: https://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=0b3452c058

Brrr

I wanted to do something to celebrate my home city Atlanta, so this is a modified version of the tattoo on Gucci Manes cheek. Also could work for Brrcon. 

Is a dual led flasher utilizing a btj transistor and white smd leds to simulate the lightning.

Design notes:

v0.1: Spread area of the LEDs was subpar but rest of the design w

as great.

v0.2: Increased size of the badge, reduced size of the bolts, made the circuit layout a little easier to navigate. 

BOM: https://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=a4c0e196c9

Mr Robopoly

Image inspired by graffiti art of Mr. Monoply Man robbing a bank but updated to modern times.

Schematic based on bbenchoffs Sao guide (lol!!).

Design notes:

V0.1 Red, looks like shit. 

V0.2 Matte Black, looks great but Sao was backwards.

V0.3 Works great, simplest badge to build. 

https://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=96084ad33d

Thereminion

Based on a mod of Forrest Mims audible light meter. My original idea was to do 3 sound lab badges (theremin, Atari punk, 4 stage sequencer). I didn’t know what form they would be but once I saw Bbenchoffs post about minions badge using yellow, the pun made itself. This was designed to have a long photoresistor that you could point at the blingy on your badge to make songs/noise. I included a switch out of common sense but it is a very tricky part to solder and it is possible to jump the pins. 

No design revisions, everything worked great the first go. I did end up going with a buzzer with a 1.18ishmm larger footprint than the board but you just angle one of the pins and it goes in great. You can use a smaller one that fits but the volume will be lower. The 6 pin matrix is an area to build mods if you want (various capacitors, switches, pots). I like to circuit bend this device and figured others might like to as well. 

https://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=868183641f

The Harbinger Sound/Circuits Lab Prototyping board.

Designs/features: 

1. 24 exposed copper pads to build a stylophone or add touch functionality to your project.

2. Footprint for a nodemcu esp8266mod ports, footprints for 4017 drivers, lm556, and many other chips, breakout headers of 2 for each pin. 

3. Ports that will fit a i2c display.

4. 9m Potentiometer footprints and 2 breakout headers for each pin.

5. 4 Shitty add-on ports that connect to battery leads. 

6. Mounting holes to turn into badge

7. Mounting holes to hold a 9v battery (with a cable tie)

8. Piezo mounting area & ports throughout the board.

9. Buildout areas. 

Design notes

V0.1: Matte Black.

V0.2: Purple, Footprint resized to fit nodemcu esp8266. 

Mystery Badges:

1 puzzle piece, static (needed to win the game. No Electronics) 

1 meme-able person, static. (No electronics)

1 meme-able person, based on Brrr schematic. 

1 beloved cartoon character, vaporizer. (Exposed copper leads on badge you could theoretically build into a vape. Untested and unrecommended that you do this.)

The Game:

The main 4 shitty add-ons each contain a puzzle to solve. The answer is a phrase or keyword. 

You will need to enter the 4 phrases found on the badges AS WELL as the hex code on the front of the puzzle SAO. 

The first 10 people to send the correct answers to my twitter(rip) will win a special badge

Only 25 puzzle pieces will be given out. 

Good luck.