Hack the North 2026 · Canada · 2026

Hack the North 2026 Hacker Badge

ESP32-C3 NFC hacker badge with Lua apps, open-sourced hardware and firmware

The Hack the North 2026 hacker badge, documented by the official Devpost event page, attendee firmware archives, and since October 13-14, 2026 by Hack the North's own open-source hardware and firmware repositories: an AA-powered ESP32-C3-MINI-1 board with a 320x240 ST7789 display, eight buttons, an SC7A20 accelerometer, an MFRC522 NFC reader, and WS2812B LEDs. It served as each hacker's ID and meal QR code, unlocked hidden apps by scanning flower-pattern stickers, swapped contacts by bumping badges over BLE, ran a Solana NFC scavenger hunt, and installs user Lua apps from a browser IDE.

Hack the North Waterloo Canada Hackathon Hacker Badge ESP32-C3 ST7789 Lua NFC MFRC522 BLE WS2812B QR Badge Open Hardware North America No Image

EventHack the North 2026

SeriesHack the North

LocationEngineering 5, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario

CountryCanada

People

Authors & Credits

PCB fabrication and assembly

JLCPCB

Named by the designer as the manufacturing partner for every prototype stage and the production run; the writeup discloses that JLCPCB and EasyEDA partially sponsored the project.

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attendee app author

kashsuks

Attendee whose Lua raycasting game documents the badge's sandboxed app APIs.

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attendee firmware author

abigail-liang

Attendee whose ESP-IDF person-finder firmware documents the badge's ESP32-C3 hardware, display, sensors, and stock Lua sandbox.

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badge designer and project lead; committer of the open-source releases

Nicholas Ficara

Writes as Nick Ficara (va3ndf) about pitching, designing, and shipping the badge, and authored the October 14, 2026 Open source hardware release and Open source firmware release commits in the hackthenorth organization.

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badge sponsor and scavenger-hunt author

Solana / @spacemandev

The designer credits Solana as the badge sponsor and @spacemandev with building the scavenger hunt into the badge, which over 300 people attempted, and mentoring hackers on firmware.

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community firmware author

Abish-27

Published the Crystal-esp32 Game Boy Color port for the badge in October 2026.

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event and badge platform publisher

Hack the North

Official organizer of the September 18-20, 2026 hackathon whose Devpost rules and sponsor prizes confirm the hackable badge handed to attendees.

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Why It Mattered

It extends the Canadian catalogue beyond security conferences to a source-backed student-hackathon hardware badge, anchored by an official prize category that explicitly invited attendees to build something creative with their Hack the North badge.

Hardware

The official KiCad project (schematic titled Hacker Badge, rev 0.0.2, dated March 22, 2026, released October 14, 2026) shows an ESP32-C3-MINI-1-N4 module, an MFRC522 13.56 MHz NFC reader with a 27.12 MHz crystal, an SC7A20 accelerometer, eight tactile buttons read through a 74HC165 shift register, six WS2812B-2020 LEDs behind an SN74LVC1T45 level shifter, a 12-pin FPC connector for the display, a USB-C port with SRV05-4 ESD protection, an LM66200 ideal-diode power mux, an MT3608 boost converter and XC6220 3.3 V regulator fed from an AA battery holder, and a slide power switch. Attendee archives identify the display as a 320x240 ST7789 panel. The official manual says the badge runs on AA batteries and can also be powered from a phone or battery bank with the switch off. The designer's writeup says JLCPCB assembled 1,750 populated badges for hackers and 750 blank boards for volunteers (ordered June 30, 2026, about 11.60 USD per populated badge), and that the production revision added a reverse-polarity protection FET on the battery line after reversed batteries caused smoke in the pilot batch. No BOM file or hardware licence is published.

Software & Apps

The official GPL-3.0 ESP-IDF 5.5 firmware boots into a paged 4x4 launcher (My Badge QR, Connect, Scanner, Share, Solana Scavenger Hunt, Sponsors, Workshop Quest, Mood LEDs, Socials, Schedule, Museum, Info & Rules) with apps that stay hidden until unlocked by scanning stickers or NFC tags, games including Snake, Tetris, Breakout, Simon, and a maze, and a restricted Lua runtime loading user apps from LittleFS, installed through the badge.hackthenorth.com browser IDE. The stock firmware has no Wi-Fi or HTTP stack: badge bumping and the Solana scavenger hunt use connectionless BLE 5 extended advertising, with mains-powered ESP32-C3 relays forwarding hunt requests to a web server. Attendee projects separately published ESP-IDF replacement firmware with Wi-Fi ranging and ESP-NOW messaging plus a Lua raycasting game built against the sandbox APIs.

Lore

Hack the North 2026 ran September 18-20, 2026 as an invite-only 36-hour hackathon for 1000+ students at the University of Waterloo, and the Solana sponsor prize list offered 2,500 USD for the Best Badge Hack, telling attendees to build something creative with their Hack the North badge without tying it to their main project. Attendee write-ups describe replacing the stock firmware to turn the badge into a directional person finder. The official manual told hackers to wear the badge at all times as their ID for check-ins and food, to get fresh batteries at the Badge Help Desk in the QNX Makerspace, and to fly home with the batteries removed. On October 13-14, 2026 Hack the North published the hardware and firmware as open source, and designer Nick Ficara published a long account of how a planned cardstock name tag became 2,500 circuit boards. By closing ceremonies, he writes, the badges had logged 11,700 badge bumps, 40,000 sponsor-table scans, and 120 custom app hacks, and 90% of 115 survey respondents called the badge Awesome! or Literally incredible.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

Operational history

Issues & Camp Impact

battery heat and travel safety low

The official manual tells hackers to switch the badge off immediately and bring it to the Badge Help Desk if the top, back, or left side near the USB port feels warm, to remove the batteries if it is very hot or damaged, to switch it off before connecting USB, and to remove the batteries before flying. Low batteries are also named as the usual cause of glitches.

Owners reusing the badge should follow the same power and battery precautions; the manual does not report any specific incident.

Confidence: official attendee manual
Status: documented safety guidance
Timeframe: Hack the North 2026
Source note: hackthenorth/badge-firmware docs/BADGE-MANUAL.md, checked 2026-10-15.

late screens and wearability low

On August 10, 2026, 25 screens from a bad supplier batch failed testing, leaving 1,725 boards ready; the designer told JLCPCB that around 1,600 working boards on time mattered more than 1,750 perfect boards late. In the post-event survey of 115 hackers, the top complaint (24 people) was that the badge, two AA cells on a bare board, was heavy and clunky to wear.

The record does not claim that all 1,750 badges reached hackers working on day one; the writeup does not say how the 25 late boards were handled.

Confidence: first-hand designer writeup
Status: documented
Timeframe: August to September 2026
Source note: va3ndf.com Making 1,750 programmable PCB badges, checked 2026-10-21.

missing rights-cleared image note

No Hack the North 2026 badge image is published because the recovered attendee repositories and event media do not provide a rights-cleared original badge photo or official reusable render.

The entry remains source-backed and image-free rather than copying Devpost media, attendee photos, or repository screenshots.

Confidence: local project policy
Status: needs licensed original replacement
Timeframe: current catalogue build
Source note: badge.gallery image policy and Hack the North 2026 Devpost plus attendee repositories.

organizer archive gap note

Hack the North published the KiCad hardware project and GPL-3.0 firmware on October 13-14, 2026, but the hardware repository has no licence and no BOM file, and both repositories were released as single squashed commits. The designer's October 13 writeup now gives the production quantity (1,750 populated plus 750 blank boards) and says the hardware is open source to use as licensed, without naming a hardware licence. The README's interactive BOM link points at a different GitHub account and was not used.

The catalogue cites organizer engineering detail and the designer's quantity directly and leaves hardware reuse terms open.

Confidence: official repositories and designer writeup
Status: hardware and firmware published; BOM file and hardware licence absent
Timeframe: as of 2026-10-21
Source note: hackthenorth/badge-hardware, hackthenorth/badge-firmware, and va3ndf.com writeup, checked 2026-10-21.

pre-production assembly defects medium

The designer reports that in the EVT an inductor labelled 10u was filled with a 10 µF capacitor (shorted as a workaround) and the chosen NFC chip was a tag rather than a reader; an EasyEDA import problem then forced white-only silkscreen. In the 50-unit PVT, batteries inserted the wrong way turned the badge into a smoke machine and the NFC chip and one power chip were placed rotated, so every board was reworked by hand (all 50 ended up working). The production design added a reverse-polarity FET with a bypass jumper, and checking JLCPCB's placement render caught the new FET rotated before production.

The shipped production boards include reverse-battery protection; earlier prototype boards may lack it. The account is the designer's own and is not independently audited.

Confidence: first-hand designer writeup
Status: fixed before the production run
Timeframe: February to August 2026
Source note: va3ndf.com Making 1,750 programmable PCB badges, checked 2026-10-21.

Resources

AP-Triangulation Badge Finder attendee firmware archive · Attendee ESP-IDF replacement firmware describing the badge hardware: ESP32-C3, 320x240 ST7789 display, eight buttons, SC7A20 accelerometer, WS2812B LEDs, stock Lua sandbox, and ESP-NOW peer-to-peer messaging. Crystal-esp32 community firmware · GPL-3.0 community project created October 19, 2026 that turns the badge into a standalone Game Boy Color handheld running Pokémon Crystal on a Peanut-GB fork, with asynchronous LCD DMA, flash saves, USB diagnostics, and game-driven RGB LEDs, tested on a physical badge. It does not include the game ROM. Doom on the Hack the North 2026 badge attendee app archive · Attendee Lua raycasting shooter built against the badge's documented sandbox APIs, confirming the stock Lua app sandbox and public badge API surface. Hack the North 2026 Devpost official event page · Official Devpost page for the September 18-20, 2026 invite-only 36-hour hackathon at the University of Waterloo, with QR-coded attendee badge IDs in the submission rules and the Solana Best Badge Hack prize inviting attendees to build something creative with their Hack the North badge. Hack the North badge Lua IDE official app IDE · Browser IDE linked from the official firmware README for installing Lua apps on the badge over USB without reflashing firmware. Hack the North badge emulator designer firmware emulator · Browser emulator linked from the designer writeup that runs the badge's real firmware compiled to WebAssembly. Hacker Badge Manual official attendee manual · Opening-ceremony manual covering AA power, button layout, the boot QR code used for check-ins and food, sticker scanning, badge bumping in the Connect app, sync stations at the Badge Help Desk, the Solana hunt, the Saturday Badge Workshop, care, and battery and heat safety. Making 1,750 programmable PCB badges for Canada's biggest hackathon designer post-event writeup · Nick Ficara's October 13, 2026 first-hand account of the badge project from a January pitch through EVT, DVT, PVT, and the production run at JLCPCB: 1,750 populated badges for hackers plus 750 blank boards for volunteers, about 20,300 USD in total, the design errors found at each stage, the overnight preparation, and usage and survey figures from the event. The Trials And Tribulations Of Your First Badge media coverage · Hackaday post by Jenny List, October 16, 2026, summarising the designer writeup: 1,750 badges, wrong footprints, misplaced components, power-supply issues, and rotated parts fixed before delivery, and badges that were well received and well used at the event. goosepaint badge app attendee app archive · Attendee Hack the North 2026 badge app for creating 12x12 colored images, further corroborating the hackable badge platform distributed at the event. hackthenorth/badge-firmware official firmware repository · Hack the North's GPL-3.0 ESP-IDF firmware for the 2026 Hacker Badge, published October 13-14, 2026, with the launcher, built-in apps and games, unlock progression, Lua runtime, Solana Scavenger Hunt BLE relay and server tools, web flasher, and docs. hackthenorth/badge-hardware official hardware repository · Hack the North's KiCad project for the 2026 Hacker Badge (schematic, PCB, and project files), published October 13-14, 2026 in an Open source hardware release commit. No licence file is included.

Sources

Hack the North / Devpost: Hack the North 2026 Retrieved 2026-09-26 · Official event source for the September 18-20, 2026 dates, Engineering 5 / University of Waterloo venue, 1000+ students in 36 hours framing, ended status, QR-coded badge IDs, and the 2,500 USD Best Badge Hack sponsor prize. Hack the North / GitHub: badge-hardware Retrieved 2026-10-15 · Primary organizer hardware source: KiCad schematic titled Hacker Badge, rev 0.0.2, dated March 22, 2026, listing the ESP32-C3-MINI-1-N4, MFRC522, SC7A20, 74HC165 button shift register, WS2812B-2020 LEDs with level shifter, FPC display connector, USB-C, LM66200 power mux, MT3608 boost, XC6220 regulator, and AA battery holder. It does not state a production count or a hardware licence. Hack the North / GitHub: badge-firmware Retrieved 2026-10-15 · Primary organizer firmware source (GPL-3.0, ESP32-C3 target, ESP-IDF 5.5.3) for the launcher and app order, unlockable apps, NFC and BLE features, the statement that the badge has no Wi-Fi or HTTP stack, the BLE extended-advertising scavenger-hunt protocol and relays, and the Lua app runtime. Hack the North / GitHub: Hacker Badge Manual Retrieved 2026-10-15 · Primary organizer attendee-facing source for AA battery power, the QR ID used for check-ins and meals, sticker scanning, badge bumping, sync stations, the Badge Help Desk, the no-replacement policy, and heat and battery safety instructions. Hackaday: The Trials And Tribulations Of Your First Badge Retrieved 2026-10-21 · Secondary media source corroborating the 1,750-badge quantity, the class of manufacturing errors, and on-time delivery. Nick Ficara / va3ndf.com: Making 1,750 programmable PCB badges for Canada's biggest hackathon Retrieved 2026-10-21 · Primary first-hand designer source for the production quantity (1,750 populated badges and 750 blank volunteer boards ordered June 30, 2026), JLCPCB assembly, cost (14,338.40 USD assembly order, 5,958.61 USD pre-ordered parts, 570.70 USD blanks), the PVT reverse-battery smoke and rotated NFC and power chips, the added reverse-polarity FET, the 25 screens that failed testing on August 10, distribution with a crash course at opening ceremonies, and closing figures of 11,700 badge bumps, 40,000 sponsor-table scans, 540 Solana blind-box scans, and 120 app hacks. It discloses partial JLCPCB and EasyEDA sponsorship. abigail-liang / GitHub: AP-Triangulation Badge Finder Retrieved 2026-09-26 · Primary hardware source for the ESP32-C3, ST7789 320x240 display, eight buttons, SC7A20 accelerometer, WS2812B LEDs, Lua sandbox, and ESP-NOW stack as described by an attendee who replaced the stock firmware. kashsuks / GitHub: doom-on-htn-badge Retrieved 2026-09-26 · Attendee app source confirming the documented badge APIs and Lua app sandbox that the stock firmware exposes.