Double Deal at BornHack: 2024 and 2025 Event Passes for Sale
News Article: BornHack Badges of 2024 and 2025 Showcase Innovation and Connectivity
At the recent BornHack summer hacker camp in Denmark, two intriguing electronic badges took centre stage: the 2024 and 2025 BornHack badges. Designed by Thomas Flummer, these badges are more than just identification tags; they are hackable gadgets that encourage collaboration, experimentation, and learning.
The 2024 badge, a slim rectangular board around 140 by 45 mm, features addressable LEDs for persistence-of-vision displays, a BornHack logo on the front, and electronics and a LiPo battery on the rear. It is designed to be powered from a USB-C source, rather than batteries. Notably, the badge comes with a Meshtastic node firmware out-of-the-box, making it easy to connect to the 2024 badge on a smartphone.
The use of the 2024 badge did not appreciably accelerate the power drain of a phone, and at the camp, it provided a fun light show and an opportunity to experiment with an interesting NFC chip. This chip is both a passive tag that can be read when the badge is turned off and a tag that can be addressed by the ESP32.
Meanwhile, the 2025 badge is a LoRa experimentation board, including another ESP32-C3 Mini and a European 868 MHz LoRa Module. The badge is a large white PCB in the shape of an Ø character, with a BornHack logo and a row of backlit status icons on the front, and electronics and a pair of AA batteries on the back. The PCB antenna is replaced with a tiny co-axial connector, and it was supplied with a Molex stick-on antenna.
The BornHack site, being a series of former gravel pits with dense forest, offered an opportunity to test 868 MHz propagation in a real-world setting. Remarkably, when tested at the far corners of the site, the 2024 BornHack badge was able to cover the entire terrain with no more than a single intermediate badge providing a relay.
While specific technical details and GitHub repository links about the features and capabilities of the 2024 and 2025 BornHack badges were not found in the search results, it is known that these repositories likely contain firmware source code, hardware schematics, and instructions for programming the badge. For precise feature lists, capabilities, codebases, or links to the GitHub repositories, checking the official BornHack website or their GitHub organization page would be recommended.
In addition to the BornHack badges, the author had the pleasure of picking up an EMF Explorer badge from its creator Darcy Neal. This badge is an analogue circuit for listening to ambient electric fields in glorious stereo, and features a UFO design backlit by a green LED.
In conclusion, the BornHack badges for 2024 and 2025 showcase innovation and connectivity, offering participants an engaging way to experiment with hardware and software, perform mesh networking, display graphics, or engage in interactive games or challenges. These badges truly embody the spirit of the BornHack event, where learning, collaboration, and creativity thrive.
These intriguing Badges of BornHack, namely the 2024 and 2025 editions, not only serve as identification tags but also function as hackable gadgets for electronics enthusiasts and technology aficionados. The 2024 badge, featuring a PCB, addressable LEDs, and a Meshtastic node firmware, can be connected to a smartphone, while the 2025 badge, a LoRa experimentation board, offers opportunities for 868 MHz propagation testing.
