Hackaday Supercon 2022 · United States · 2022

Hackaday Supercon 2022 Voja4 Badge

Front-panel 4-bit computer badge with 272 LEDs

The 2022 Hackaday Supercon 6 badge, also documented as Voja4, was a front-panel-style 4-bit computer badge designed by Voja Antonic and implemented on a PIC24FJ256GA704 with 272 LEDs, direct button programming, serial save/load, internal flash storage, SAO serial expansion, and a public assembler/emulator/tooling archive.

Hackaday Supercon United States Voja4 PIC24FJ256GA704 4-bit CPU Front Panel 272 LEDs Assembler Emulator SAO North America

EventHackaday Supercon 2022

SeriesHackaday Superconference

LocationPasadena, California

CountryUnited States

People

Authors & Credits

Voja4 badge designer

Voja Antonic

The Hackaday.io guide and technical project page identify the badge as designed by Voja Antonic and document the Voja4 processor/display concept.

Source

assembler, disassembler, and documentation contributor

Mike Szczys

The assembler README credits Mike Szczys with original tool and documentation work around the Voja4 assembler/disassembler workflow.

Source

badge reveal author

Tom Nardi

Author of the Hackaday reveal article used for primary Supercon 2022 badge evidence.

Source

event, guide, article, and repository publisher

Hackaday

Hackaday published the badge reveal, guide, technical links, and public tools repository for the Supercon 6 Voja4 badge.

Source

Why It Mattered

It fills the post-lockdown Supercon gap and captures a deliberate shift away from feature escalation toward computational literacy: attendees programmed a simulated 4-bit CPU at the bit, register, instruction, and memory level while still getting modern repo-backed tooling.

Hardware

Hackaday and Voja's Hackaday.io technical page document a PIC24FJ256GA704 running a simulated 4-bit processor, 272 LEDs exposing registers, flags, ALU, stack pointer, program word, program counter, and memory state, 3x16 opcode/operand disassembler LEDs, front-panel buttons, two-AA 3 V battery power, an ICSP/IO header with four input and four output bits, and an SAO port that replaced normal I2C with serial I/O.

Software & Apps

The badge accepted 31 instructions, adjustable runtime speed from fast execution down to single-step, 4096 12-bit program words, 256 data nibbles, a five-deep subroutine stack, direct binary/select-mode programming, serial save/load to another badge or computer, up to 15 internal flash program slots, firmware update bootloader behavior, five manuals, a Python assembler/disassembler, emulator code, example programs, and a firmware binary archive.

Lore

The badge intentionally evoked Altair/IMSAI front panels and the early-computing act of depositing instructions by hand. Hackaday's guide taught attendees to enter binary instructions directly on the badge before moving to the assembler and emulator, while later discussion on Voja's project page records bootloader, firmware-update, manual-errata, serial, and self-assembly support questions from owners.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

badge architecture source-backed

Voja4 simulated 4-bit CPU

The badge used a 16-bit PIC24FJ256GA704 to simulate a 4-bit educational processor with visible registers, flags, ALU, stack, memory state, and instruction execution.