BSides Knoxville 2025 · United States · 2025

BSides Knoxville 2025 Fox Pick ESP32-S3 Badge

Maker-documented ESP32-S3 electronic conference badge

BSides Knoxville's 2025 official guide says Fox Pick made the event badges. In a public post-event talk, a Fox Pick representative describes the resulting electronic badge as ESP32-S3 based, with Bluetooth Low Energy and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, an SSD1309 display, capacitive touch controls, USB-C, a CH340 USB-UART bridge, battery voltage monitoring and charging/protection circuitry, a NeoPixel status light, and exposed I/O pads. The talk says source code was made available through a QR-linked GitHub page, but this pass did not recover a direct repository URL.

BSides Knoxville United States Tennessee Knoxville Security BSides ESP32-S3 Electronic Badge Bluetooth LE Wi-Fi SSD1309 Capacitive Touch USB-C Fox Pick North America

EventBSides Knoxville 2025

SeriesBSides Knoxville

LocationThe Mill & Mine and Regas Square Events, Knoxville, Tennessee

CountryUnited States

People

Authors & Credits

2025 badge maker

Fox Pick

BSides Knoxville's official 2025 guide thanks Fox Pick and says it made the badges that year. This identifies the maker relationship, not individual design, manufacturing, or image-rights roles.

Source

Fox Pick representative and public badge-talk speaker

Morgan Rogers

The public talk mirror identifies Morgan Rogers as the speaker for the post-event Fox Pick badge account. The record uses that talk as maker testimony without extending it to an unverified sole-design, production, or image-licensing role.

Source

Why It Mattered

It adds a documented Tennessee badge with unusually detailed maker testimony while preserving source boundaries. The organizer's guide proves that Fox Pick made the badges; the talk supplies the technical narrative, and neither is inflated into a recipient ledger, a production count, a complete source archive, or an image-reuse grant.

Hardware

The maker talk identifies an ESP32-S3 core with Bluetooth Low Energy and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, an SSD1309 display, capacitive controls, USB-C, a CH340 USB-UART bridge, a NeoPixel status light, battery-voltage monitoring, onboard charging/protection circuitry, and exposed unused I/O pads. It does not publish the board revision, PCB dimensions or artwork, schematic, Gerbers, BOM, exact battery chemistry or capacity, display configuration, component substitutions, manufacturing quantity, radio certification, or a final production configuration.

Software & Apps

The talk says the shipped software was developed in the Arduino C++ ecosystem and demonstrates a name/state interface, Bluetooth scanning, Wi-Fi time synchronization, and NeoPixel status behavior. It says the source was shared through a QR-linked GitHub page, but no direct repository URL, source license, release/tag, build instructions, final binary, or deployed configuration was recovered in this pass. MicroPython is mentioned only as an installable possibility, not as the established shipped runtime.

Lore

BSides Knoxville took place on Friday, May 9, 2025 in Knoxville, with sessions across The Mill & Mine and Regas Square Events. The official guide thanks Fox Pick and says it made the badges that year. In the later public talk, Morgan Rogers describes the design, build, and high-volume manufacturing experience without publishing an exact unit count or showing who received which version; this record therefore avoids an attendee-wide allocation claim.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

badge controller and radio surface maker-documented public talk

ESP32-S3 wireless controller

The Fox Pick talk identifies the badge as ESP32-S3 based, with Bluetooth Low Energy and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi capability.

Compatibility: BSides Knoxville 2025 Fox Pick badge as described in the public talk; final radio configuration, certification, and production revision are not documented.

Source

connection and power subsystem maker-documented public talk

USB-C, CH340, and battery support

The public talk describes USB-C, a CH340 USB-UART bridge, battery-voltage monitoring, and onboard charging/protection circuitry.

Compatibility: BSides Knoxville 2025 Fox Pick badge; battery chemistry, capacity, connector wiring, charging limits, safety review, and final power population are not established.

Source

firmware environment and demonstrated behavior maker-documented public talk

Arduino C++ software surface

The talk describes Arduino C++ as the shipped development environment and demonstrates settings, Bluetooth scanning, Wi-Fi time synchronization, and NeoPixel status behavior.

Compatibility: Talk-demonstrated 2025 badge software context only; the QR-linked GitHub destination, source license, release, final binary, and deployment configuration were not recovered.

Source

user interface maker-documented public talk

SSD1309 display and capacitive controls

The maker talk identifies an SSD1309 display and capacitive touch controls as the badge's user-facing interface.

Compatibility: BSides Knoxville 2025 Fox Pick badge; no display resolution, touch-pad layout, controller configuration, or final board revision is published.

Source

Operational history

Issues & Camp Impact

distribution and production boundary note

The official guide says Fox Pick made the badges, and the public talk discusses high-volume manufacture, but neither reviewed source gives an exact unit count, recipient list, ticket tier, pickup record, variant inventory, replacement policy, or attendee-wide allocation statement.

The record documents a real event-linked electronic artifact without treating the existence of badges or a manufacturing account as proof that every attendee received the same finished device.

Confidence: official guide plus public maker talk
Status: artifact and maker relationship documented; allocation unresolved
Timeframe: 2025 post-event record
Source note: BSides Knoxville 2025 official guide and Morgan Rogers' public Fox Pick talk.

hardware specification boundary note

The public talk names the ESP32-S3, display family, interaction and power features, but does not publish a board revision, PCB dimensions or artwork, schematic, Gerbers, BOM, exact display configuration, battery chemistry or capacity, component substitutions, radio certification, test results, or final production configuration.

The catalogue preserves the documented board-level surface without presenting a talk summary as a complete hardware specification, manufacturing record, safety assessment, or reproducible design.

Confidence: maker-documented summary only
Status: component-level overview public; engineering archive absent
Timeframe: 2025-2026 source review
Source note: The 2025 BSides Knoxville Badge: Tips, Tricks, and Tribulations public AllBSides mirror/transcript.

missing rights-cleared image note

No BSides Knoxville 2025 Fox Pick ESP32-S3 Badge image is published because the current public source trail has not been paired with a reusable original badge or artifact photo or official upstream raster render with source URL, license or permission basis, attribution, and processing notes.

The United States record remains source-backed and image-free rather than copying source-page media, documentation screenshots, event photos, social media, placeholders, or generated approximations.

Confidence: local project policy
Status: needs licensed original replacement
Timeframe: current catalogue build
Source note: badge.gallery image policy and BSides Knoxville 2025 official guide and event listing plus the public Fox Pick maker talk mirror.

technical archive and source-release boundary note

Morgan Rogers' talk says source code was made available through a QR-linked GitHub page, but this pass did not recover the destination URL. No source license, repository ownership record, source snapshot, release/tag, build instructions, final binary, schematic, Gerbers, BOM, or board files were recovered.

The catalogue can retain the maker's source-release statement while avoiding a fabricated repository link, open-source license claim, reproducible build claim, or unsupported source-code detail.

Confidence: public maker talk and source recovery
Status: maker states QR-linked source; direct archive unlocated
Timeframe: 2025-2026 source review
Source note: The 2025 BSides Knoxville Badge: Tips, Tricks, and Tribulations public AllBSides mirror/transcript.

Resources

BSides Knoxville 2025 official event listing official event listing · Primary 10-Sec event listing for the Friday, May 9, 2025 BSides Knoxville date and 08:00-18:00 schedule context. BSides Knoxville 2025 official guide official attendee guide · Primary organizer source for the 2025 Knoxville programme, The Mill & Mine and Regas Square Events context, and the statement that Fox Pick made the badges that year. The 2025 BSides Knoxville Badge original video original talk video · Direct YouTube URL for the Morgan Rogers talk as linked by the public AllBSides mirror. The accessible mirror transcript is the reviewed technical-claim record for this catalogue entry. The 2025 BSides Knoxville Badge talk transcript public maker-talk mirror and transcript · Public AllBSides mirror/transcript of Morgan Rogers' post-event Fox Pick talk, used for the maker's component, firmware-environment, and production-boundary testimony.

Sources

10-Sec / BSides Knoxville: BSides Knoxville: The Guide Retrieved 2026-05-15 · Primary organizer guide for the 2025 conference, its two Knoxville session venues, and the statement that Fox Pick made the badges that year. 10-Sec / BSides Knoxville: BSides Knoxville 2025 Retrieved 2026-05-15 · Primary event-listing source for the May 9, 2025 date and the public conference context. AllBSides mirror / Morgan Rogers, Fox Pick: The 2025 BSides Knoxville Badge: Tips, Tricks, and Tribulations Retrieved 2026-05-15 · Public post-event talk transcript identifying the Fox Pick maker perspective and the ESP32-S3, display, touch, radio, USB, power, I/O, Arduino/C++, and QR-linked-source statements. It is used as maker testimony; no direct source repository URL was recovered from the mirror.