BSides Joburg 2026 · South Africa · 2026

BSides Joburg 2026 Badge

ATtiny816 Light The Way attendee badge

A completed BSides Joburg 2026 electronic attendee badge documented through a first-hand August 13, 2026 reversing write-up and its MIT-licensed firmware archive: the badge shipped as an ATtiny816 in a VQFN-20 package with seven front LEDs, a 3.3V coin cell holder, and a switch, and the write-up reports lighthouse artwork for general attendees plus a distinct speaker image variant.

BSides Joburg Johannesburg South Africa Security BSides Electronic Badge ATtiny816 LED Badge Light The Way Attendee Badge Firmware Archive Africa No Image

EventBSides Joburg 2026

SeriesBSides Joburg

LocationFocus Rooms, 20 Heaton Lane Longlake, Johannesburg

CountrySouth Africa

People

Authors & Credits

attendee reverser and firmware archivist

Travis More / taffy210

First-hand attendee who recovered the real LED pin map, wrote replacement firmware, and published the MIT-licensed archive and August 13, 2026 write-up.

Source

badge designer and builder

Mike / @shifttymike

The first-hand write-up credits @shifttymike with designing and building the BSides Joburg 2026 badge and reports his delight at attendees hacking on it.

Source

Why It Mattered

It closes the previously open BSides Joburg monitoring item with artifact-level evidence and adds a source-backed South African electronic badge, while keeping organizer design intent, production counts, and allocation claims out of the record.

Hardware

The first-hand write-up states the badge ships as an ATtiny816 in a VQFN-20 package with seven LEDs across the front, a 3.3V coin cell holder, and a switch, and credits designer-builder Mike / @shifttymike. The attendee later hand-wired an SSD1315 OLED and a TP4056 plus LiPo power path, and those additions are explicitly excluded from the shipped configuration. No schematic, BOM, PCB archive, production count, or organizer hardware statement was recovered.

Software & Apps

The MIT-licensed attendee repository publishes custom Larson-scanner, fill-bar, and strobe firmware for the shipped ATtiny816 plus UPDI pin-disco diagnostics used to recover the real LED map, and the write-up documents the hand-decoded pin map. No organizer firmware, official app, badge challenge, or serial protocol was published in this pass.

Lore

The write-up frames the badge as a deliberately minimal finished sentence handed to a room full of hackers: it reports that the designer noticed attendees hacking on his badge and got in touch, and that the author's unit carried a speaker image instead of the lighthouse artwork most attendees received. The official BSides Joburg site still frames the July 25, 2026 Focus Rooms event pre-event and does not mention the badge.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

Operational history

Issues & Camp Impact

attendee-source badge boundary note

The badge record rests on first-hand attendee reversing and firmware evidence; the official BSides Joburg site never mentions the badge, and no organizer statement, schematic, BOM, production count, or allocation ledger was recovered.

The catalogue documents a real shipped electronic attendee badge without claiming organizer design intent beyond the write-up's designer credit, quantities, or which ticket classes received one.

Confidence: first-hand attendee archive plus official event page
Status: organizer hardware statement outstanding
Timeframe: 2026 post-event pass
Source note: BSides Joburg official site, taffy210 repository, and zero-entry.co.za write-up, checked 2026-09-26.

missing rights-cleared image note

No BSides Joburg 2026 badge image is published because the attendee repository images and blog photos are not paired with a complete reusable license, attribution, and processing record for this catalogue.

The entry remains source-backed and image-free rather than copying attendee photos, animated GIFs, or diagram material.

Confidence: local project policy
Status: needs licensed original replacement
Timeframe: current catalogue build
Source note: badge.gallery image policy and the taffy210 repository plus zero-entry.co.za write-up.

Resources

Attendee badge firmware repository source repository · MIT-licensed first-hand attendee archive with custom ATtiny816 Larson-scanner/fill-bar/strobe firmware, UPDI pin-disco diagnostics, the recovered real LED map, and flash tooling. Attendee repository license license · MIT license statement for the attendee firmware archive; the blog write-up's own media terms are not treated as image reuse rights. BSides Joburg official site official event page · Official chapter event source for the July 25, 2026 Light The Way edition, 08:00-18:00 at Focus Rooms, 20 Heaton Lane Longlake, Johannesburg; the site still reads pre-event with a countdown and ticketing links and does not mention the badge. Reverse-Engineering My Own Conference Badge first-hand writeup · August 13, 2026 post-event write-up documenting the shipped ATtiny816 VQFN-20, seven front LEDs, coin cell holder, and switch, the lighthouse and speaker image variants, and designer-builder Mike / @shifttymike. Security BSides chapter listing chapter directory · Global Security BSides chapter listing for BSides Johannesburg / BSides Joburg with the official site and organizer contact, anchoring the Security BSides lineage.

Sources

BSides Joburg: BSides Joburg Retrieved 2026-09-26 · Primary official event source for the July 25, 2026 Light The Way date, 08:00-18:00 times, and Focus Rooms venue. The page carries no badge mention and still reads pre-event after the elapsed date. taffy210 / GitHub: BSides Joburg 2026 Badge Retrieved 2026-09-26 · Primary artifact source for the shipped ATtiny816 VQFN-20, seven LEDs, coin cell holder, switch, real LED map, and attendee-written replacement firmware under MIT. zero-entry.co.za / Travis More: Reverse-Engineering My Own Conference Badge Retrieved 2026-09-26 · First-hand post-event corroboration for the held conference and shipped badge: lighthouse versus speaker image variants, 'light the way' tagline, and the designer-builder credit for Mike / @shifttymike.