A Telegraph Interface For the Hacker Hotel 2024 Badge

Hacker Resort is a small Dutch hacker occasion that takes place, as its identify suggests, in a resort. It’s a welcome excessive level within the damp of a north-west-European winter, and attendees come to its setting within the wooded Veluwe area within the centre of the nation from far and broad. As is the customized with such occasions it has an digital badge, and this year’s one had a moderately uncommon interface. As a substitute of a keyboard for textual content enter, it replicates a nineteenth century Criminal and Wheatstone telegraph, changing the 5 needles of the unique with a diamond-shaped grid of LEDs.

At its coronary heart is an Espressif ESP32-C6 microcontroller which supplies each a processor powerhouse and the standard array of wi-fi connectivity. Paired with that could be a way more modest CH32V003 microcontroller to deal with I/O duties, and an e-paper display screen utilizing shows salvaged from surplus German grocery store shelf labels. That interface is dealt with by an array of five-way switches, and in a stroke of genius there’s a small relay on board which does nothing however present a satisfying tactile “click on”. Growth is seen to by an SAO connector, Qwiic, and a USB-C socket. The software program in the meantime is a mixture of a non-volatile nametag, a posh set of puzzles used within the on-site competitors, and a messaging system utilizing the C6’s 802.15.4 mesh networking. A very neat function of this was a Battleships recreation that may very well be performed with one other badge.

Whereas this isn’t the first Hacker Hotel badge with an e-paper display, we like this one for its novel interface, for the mesh connectivity, and for that clicky relay. We’ll positively be utilizing ours as a reputation badge for a while to come back.