Onion DAO 2026 · United States · 2026
Open ESP32-S3 Chicago builder-festival hardware badge
Onion DAO's official 2026 Chicago festival page says every accepted attendee gets a hardware badge at registration, with most components already on the board and a final soldering step. The same official site links to OnionDAO's public oniondao-badge repository, which documents a hacker-conference-style ESP32-S3 design, optional RF/audio modules, a display socket, secure element, expansion ports, and source trees for hardware and software. The public record supports a real organizer-published artifact and design, while exact recipient allocation, completed assembly, and final attendee population remain unverified.
People
The official festival page publishes the accepted-attendee badge statement and links to the OnionDAO-git public source organization. This is an organizer and source-publisher credit, not an individual hardware, firmware, manufacturing, or image-reuse attribution.
SourceIt adds a Chicago frontier-technology builder festival with substantial public hardware and firmware documentation to the compendium, while keeping a source-backed event badge distinct from an unverified claim of universal post-event handoff, a traditional conference admission credential, or a single final attendee configuration.
The organizer-linked repository documents an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N8R8 with 8 MB flash and 8 MB octal PSRAM, CH340C USB-UART with DTR/RTS auto-reset, ATECC608B secure element, TCA9534 I2C expander for six buttons, and a 24-pin e-paper-or-TFT display socket. KiCad 9 project files, schematic, PCB layout, STEP model, per-variant BOMs, Gerbers, and fabrication outputs are public. The two 10-pin side ports support optional CC1101 Sub-GHz and sound modules, which share GPIO and are therefore not a simultaneously established default population; the reviewed sources do not specify a final attendee power source, display, module, or assembly variant.
The repository's software tree is community-driven and documents ESP-IDF v5.5.x projects using the Arduino core, ESP32-S3 8 MB-flash and octal-PSRAM configuration, USB serial flashing through the CH340C, and manual BOOT/RESET recovery. Its public repository page had no tagged releases in this review, so these source and toolchain materials are not represented as a recovered final event firmware image or a record of what every attendee ran.
Onion DAO describes its June 2026 Year Two program as a four-week downtown Chicago builder festival spanning hardware, AI, cybersecurity, and blockchain. It calls the hardware badge an embassy credential that can evolve with workshop attendance, factions, and contributions. That program framing establishes intended social use, but the reviewed pages do not publish an attendee data model, game rules, backend, privacy policy, final activation state, or completed event-by-event interaction record.
Lifecycle
The official festival page says every accepted attendee gets a hardware badge at registration, with most components already on the board and a little soldering needed to bring it alive.
SourceThe organizer-linked design documents a 24-pin J4 socket for e-paper or TFT SPI display modules, with GPIO, reset, busy, data-command, chip-select, clock, and MOSI details.
SourceThe official guide specifies ESP-IDF v5.5.x with the Arduino core, an ESP32-S3 target, CH340 USB serial flashing, auto-reset, and a manual BOOT/RESET recovery sequence.
SourceThe hardware guide documents two 10-pin side ports with power, ground, and GPIO for external modules, lanyards, or hardware modifications.
SourceThe module guide documents a CC1101 SPI radio option for 315, 433, 868, or 915 MHz matching-network variants, powered through the peripheral rail.
SourceThe module guide documents an optional NS4168 I2S amplifier and SPH0641 PDM microphone sound module on the side-port hardware.
SourceOperational history
The catalogue preserves the organizer's explicit attendee-badge statement without presenting it as a verified universal handoff or a completed configuration for every individual participant.
The record distinguishes open design capability from a claimed uniform production configuration or a complete inventory of event-issued variants.
Readers can follow the open source trail while the catalogue avoids treating a default licence statement or development guide as final firmware provenance, a universal binary licence, or a deployment guarantee.
The Chicago record remains source-backed and image-free rather than copying event media, board screenshots, GitHub previews, social images, generated approximations, or an unclear-rights upstream raster.
The record documents the available hardware surfaces without endorsing RF transmission, replay, credential use, or unreviewed expansion hardware.