Michael Whiteley (aka [compukidmike]) is a badgelife celeb. Collectively, he and his spouse Katie make up MK Issue. They’ve created a number of the hottest digital convention badges. In fact, even consultants make errors and run into challenges after they dare to push the envelope of expertise and supply schedules. In his Supercon 2022 discuss, There’s No Rev 2: When Badgelife Goes Mistaken, Mike shares particulars from a few of his worst badge snafus and likewise how he managed to gracefully pull them again from the sting of catastrophe.

Dwelling the Badgelife

Attendees on the world’s largest hacker conference, DEF CON in Las Vegas, had already turn out to be accustomed to receiving and sporting very cool and novel admission tokens, extra correctly often known as badges. Then in 2006, at DEF CON 14, every little thing modified. Designed by Joe Grand, the primary digital DEF CON badge was a circuit board that includes a tiny PIC microcontroller, two LEDs, and a single pushbutton. Badgelife was born.

DEF CON 30 People Sampling Board

Mike begins his conflict tales with one in regards to the DEF CON 30 badge. This was a herculean challenge with 25,000 badges being produced on a brief timeline within the ever-changing chaos of a semiconductor supply-chain meltdown. Despite the fact that many regard it as among the finest DEF CON badges ever made, the DC30 badge posed quite a few challenges to its creators. Microcontrollers have been briefly provide throughout 2021 and 2022 forcing the badge group to regulate part vendor provides with the intention to snipe chips as quickly as they appeared in inventory. The DC30 badge was really redesigned repeatedly as completely different microcontrollers fluctuated out and in of provide.

Final minute modifications to an audio amplifier on the DC30 badge have been additionally compelled by provide chain shortages. The amplifier modification launched circumstances the place the chip might dissipate if the audio cable was looped again from a badge’s audio output to its enter. It was additionally found that the amplifier chip might dissipate if a lanyard clips shorted in opposition to the badge’s audio jack. Sadly, this discovery was not made till after the convention began. The amplifier chips that have been burning up have been in an almost microscopic ball grid array (BGA) package deal. At just one.5 mm sq., these are usually not the best chips to remodel when the are broken.

Mike goes on to share tales from different badge initiatives. These embrace extra lanyard clip issues with a SAINTCON badge, snapped 0.8 mm PCBs, damaged traces related by vias, reversed LEDs, mod wires, silkscreen delays, smashed connectors, and so forth. There are such a lot of particulars that go into an digital badge and failing any one in all them can turn out to be a showstopper.

Making Issues Proper

In fact, an excellent a part of studying about all these issues is listening to how they have been mitigated. Dealing with points on the fly, as gracefully as doable, is the place actual experience is available in. We’re fortunate to have boards like Supercon the place we are able to study each other’s errors and hopefully keep away from them sooner or later.

Mike shared how the variety of burning amplifier chips at DC30 have been considerably diminished by putting stickers on the badge baggage and indicators across the convention displaying how the audio cable was to not be looped again between the audio output and enter. Additionally, many individuals coated the audio jack pins with tape to keep away from shorting in opposition to the lanyard clips. And better of all, the {Hardware} Hacking Village stepped as much as help folks to carry out the troublesome BGA rework on the tiny amplifier chips. Whereas regression testing after the change to the amplifier chip could have caught a number of the issues, rapidly figuring out root causes and speaking fixes actually helped to save lots of loads of badges.

For the SAINTCON 2019 badge, Mike caught reversed LEDs in the course of the manufacturing course of. The meeting home was in a position to flip them, however solely at the price of delayed supply. The badge boards didn’t arrive till the morning of convention. Mike additionally nailed a final minute repair with mod wires on a couple of hundred DC801 badges. After which as soon as once more by stuffing elements on the entire Automotive Hacking Village badges over one ultimate weekend after the board home misprinted the PCB silkscreens introducing a major supply delay.

Classes Realized

In the end, Mike summarizes a very powerful classes he has realized from all of his badgelife adventures: “Time is every little thing. It may be your saving grace or your downfall. Issues will go flawed, so have a backup plan. Lanyards are chaotic evil. Badges will get damaged in surprising methods. Check, take a look at, and take a look at some extra!”