Engineering creativity comes to life when you have to design around a set of constraints. We can do just about anything with enough time, talent, and treasure, but what can you do when shackled with limitations? Some of the most creative electronic manufacturing tricks spring to life when designing conference badges, as the ability to built multiples, to come in under budget, and most importantly to have the production finished in time are all in play.
This happens at conferences throughout the year and all over the globe, but the highest concentration I’ve seen for these unique pieces of art is at DEF CON every year. I loved seeing dozens of interesting projects this year, and have picked a handful of the coolest features on a badge to show off in this article. I still love all the rest, and have a badge supercut article on the way, but until then let’s take a look at an RC car badge, a different kind of blinky bling, and a few other flourishes of brilliance.
Oh No They Didn’t: Car Hacking Village Badge
Far and away the craziest badge at DEF CON 27 was the Car Hacking Village badge. It’s a functional car that you can connect to via Bluetooth and drive around to the delight of the child in each of us.
It’s a toy car, so what? The difference here is the economy of scale. If you’re going to ship 10,000 of them it’s no problem to build an injection molded enclosure and house the electronics to control it wirelessly. But this project set the production run for just 350 SUV-shaped badges. At this scale, injection molding is pro ..
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