GoKawiilHack the North built 1,750 programmable circuit-board badges with screens and radios
Organizers of Hack the North, Canada's largest hackathon, replaced the traditional cardstock name tag with a custom hardware badge featuring an LED display, buttons, audio and wireless radio that attendees could fully program. The project, pitched eight months earlier, went through four hardware iterations before reaching a final production run of 1,750 units, with the design, firmware and an emulator all released as open source.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The project suggests hackathon organizers are borrowing design culture from cybersecurity conferences, where custom programmable badges have long been a hallmark, potentially raising expectations for other student-run events. Open-sourcing the hardware and firmware could let other hackathons or communities replicate or build on the design rather than starting from scratch. The repeated iteration cycle also illustrates the real cost and complexity of scaling a hardware idea from a single prototype to thousands of working units on a budget.
- Hack the North issued 1,750 custom programmable circuit-board badges instead of paper name tags
- The badge included a screen, buttons, LEDs, audio and wireless radio, built through four hardware iterations
- Hardware, firmware and an emulator for the badge have been released as open source
Raspberry Pi Pico W — If building programmable hardware badges sounds fun, the Pico W is a great way to dive into DIY embedded electronics with wireless capability built in. It's cheap, hacker-friendly, and supported by a huge community, making it perfect for prototyping your own badge-like gadgets with screens and buttons. Great for tinkerers inspired by this kind of hardware hacking culture.
See Raspberry Pi Pico W on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: va3ndf.com — Nick Ficara, 2026-10-14
Published there as: “Making 1,750 programmable PCB badges for Canada's biggest hackathon”
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