SAINTCON 2025 · United States · 2025

SAINTCON 2025 Wrench Badge

Oversized ESP32-S3 wrench badge with an NFC tag, a six-faction game, and Nut game stations

The SAINTCON 2025 main badge for the October 21-24, 2025 conference in Provo, shaped as what its designer calls a comically oversized wrench: a 50 mm wrench with a 10 mm lanyard hole. An NFC tag in the jaw collected one-time codes from NFC game stations called Nuts, and the badge checked those codes in with a game server to score points or unlock game nodes. compukidmike published the schematic, BOM, Gerbers, KiCad files, and ESP-IDF firmware for the badge and the Nuts on October 27, 2025. The archived official BadgeLife page frames the badge game as the conclusion of the Klippy AI storyline begun in 2023.

SAINTCON United States Utah Provo Electronic Badge ESP32-S3 ESP32-C3 NFC ST25DV ATECC608B ST7789 WS2812B MiniBadge BadgeLife Badge Game Open Hardware Community Firmware No Image North America

EventSAINTCON 2025

SeriesSAINTCON

LocationUtah Valley Convention Center, Provo, Utah

CountryUnited States

People

Authors & Credits

BadgeLife community

BP

Named in the official 2025 BadgeLife community credit.

Source

BadgeLife community

Mike's Wife

Named in this form in the official 2025 BadgeLife community credit.

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BadgeLife community

redactd

Named in the official 2025 BadgeLife community credit; the firmware's game API host is sc25.redactd.dev.

Source

BadgeLife community

v0rtex

Named in the official 2025 BadgeLife community credit.

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badge and Nut design archive publisher; BadgeLife community

compukidmike

Publisher of the badge and Nut board files, firmware, and README, and first name in the official BadgeLife community credit.

Source

community firmware and browser emulator author (unofficial)

David Vasquez

Author of the Pug Pet firmware and the SAINTCON Badge Museum (GitHub PugTechnology); not presented as an organizer or badge designer.

Source

community firmware author (unofficial)

BrainVirus

Author of the MIT-licensed Wireless Foxhunter firmware for the 2025 badge.

Source

event organizer

UtahSAINT / SAINTCON

Organizer of SAINTCON 25 and publisher of the archived homepage and BadgeLife page.

Source

Why It Mattered

It fills the gap between the 2024 MiniBadge trading record and the 2026 RP2350 badge with a fully published main badge: designer-released board files and firmware for both the badge and its station hardware, which is rarer than a badge archive alone, plus first-party archived pages for the event and the badge team.

Hardware

The designer's final BOM lists an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 module, a 2.0-inch ST7789 LCD on a 22-pin connector, 20 WS2812B-2020 RGB LEDs, an ST25DV04K dynamic NFC tag, an ATECC608B secure element, a four-way navigation switch with centre push, a slide switch, a USB-C receptacle, a two-AA battery holder with an XC9148 boost converter and AZ1117-3.3 regulator, an Allegro A3910 whose role is not documented, and three SAINTCON MiniBadge footprints. The firmware configuration adds 16 MB flash and PSRAM, drives the LCD over an 8-bit parallel bus, and maps the five-way joystick, battery sense, the NFC interrupt, two I2C buses, and two MiniBadge clock pins. The Nut stations are a separate ESP32-C3 design with a PTX105R NFC reader, an MCP23x17 I/O expander, six LEDs, rotary and button inputs, and 3D-printed nut, base, ring, and button parts.

Software & Apps

The badge firmware (version 0.2.1) is an ESP-IDF application with an LVGL interface. It holds the badge game with six factions (Ember Claw, Aether Watch, Verdant Pact, Iron Howl, Dream Coil, and Dawn Accord), game nodes, and Nut types for Telecom, Community, Contest, Event, Vendor, Misc, and a Sorting Hat. It also includes an HTTPS client for a game API at sc25.redactd.dev, an OTA check every two hours, MiniBadge I2C scanning, NFC and NDEF handling, and a secure-element component. A Dawn Accord monitor reads an AI inhibitor resistor and a security strip trace and shows a violation screen if either is removed or cut. The Nut firmware (version 1.2.0) targets the ESP32-C3. On November 12, 2025 the designer added an AfterCon Arduino sketch that turns a Nut into a Bluetooth LE volume and play/pause knob.

Lore

SAINTCON 25 ran October 21-24, 2025 at the Utah Valley Convention Center, and an archived official homepage from November 3, 2025 reads Goodbye, and Thank You from SAINTCON 25. The archived BadgeLife community page, brought to you by compukidmike, redactd, v0rtex, BP, and Mike's Wife, says the evil AI Klippy tried to take over the world in 2023 and was defeated in 2024, and that the 2025 badge game lets attendees decide how the story ends. It hints at the design with If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!, names solder bridges as the most common support issue, and offers a MiniBadge at the booth. In October 2026 a community developer published an MIT-licensed Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE fox-hunting firmware for the badge.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

alternative firmware community release (2026-11-01)

Pug Pet community firmware

David Vasquez's unofficial pixel pug is fed, played with in Treat Catch, taken on walkies, petted, and put to nap. It installs into the spare ota_1 slot, leaves the original firmware in ota_0 with a Boot stock firmware menu entry to switch back, and stores its save in the NFC tag's EEPROM, so a phone tap shows the pug's name, food, and fun levels.

Compatibility: SAINTCON 2025 Wrench Badge over USB with ESP-IDF 5.5.1; the author recommends a full flash backup first, which holds the badge's Wi-Fi settings and should stay private.

Source

alternative firmware community work in progress (2026-10-31)

Wireless Foxhunter community firmware

BrainVirus's unofficial firmware lists Wi-Fi or Bluetooth LE targets by signal strength and tracks one with an RSSI readout, a rolling graph, and a two-jaw LED meter, with eight colour themes and a USB serial CLI.

Compatibility: SAINTCON 2025 Wrench Badge

Source

badge game hardware designer-published hardware and firmware

Nut NFC game stations

Turning a Nut, an ESP32-C3 station with an NFC reader in a 3D-printed nut housing, wrote a one-time code to the NFC tag in the wrench's jaw. The badge then checked the code in with the game server to award points or unlock game nodes. Nut types cover Telecom, Community, Contest, Event, Vendor, Misc, and a Sorting Hat.

Compatibility: SAINTCON 2025 Wrench Badge

Source

badge interface designer BOM and firmware

Three MiniBadge sockets

The BOM places three SAINTCON MiniBadge footprints on the wrench, and the firmware scans them over I2C every two seconds and toggles the MiniBadge clock line once a second.

Compatibility: SAINTCON MiniBadge standard

Source

collaborative badge game official page and designer firmware

Six-faction Klippy AI badge game

The official BadgeLife page describes a big collaborative game, played with or against other attendees, that decides how the Klippy AI storyline ends. The firmware defines six factions, Ember Claw, Aether Watch, Verdant Pact, Iron Howl, Dream Coil, and Dawn Accord, each with its own colours and headquarters node.

Compatibility: SAINTCON 2025 Wrench Badge

Source

community browser emulator community release (2026-11-01)

SAINTCON Badge Museum browser emulator

The unofficial SAINTCON Badge Museum fetches compukidmike's 2025 firmware at a pinned commit, scrubs conference secrets, and compiles it to WebAssembly so the wrench badge runs in a browser, with the pug pet as a second mode.

Compatibility: Web browser; progress stays in local storage and does not reach the original game server.

Source

event MiniBadge official archived page

BadgeLife booth MiniBadge

The archived BadgeLife page says a MiniBadge was available and invites attendees to come say hi to get one. Its design and quantity are not documented.

Compatibility: SAINTCON 2025 Wrench Badge

Source

in-game hardware mechanic designer firmware

Dawn Accord tamper checks

The firmware periodically reads a physical AI inhibitor resistor and a security strip trace. Removing the resistor or cutting the trace shows a red Violates Dawn Accord, Violation reported screen until the part is reinstalled or the trace repaired.

Compatibility: SAINTCON 2025 Wrench Badge

Source

post-event station firmware designer sketch (2025-11-12)

AfterCon Nut volume knob

An Arduino sketch, built for a LOLIN C3 Mini board target, makes a Nut appear as the Bluetooth LE keyboard SC25Nut, with clockwise and counter-clockwise turns for volume and the button for play/pause, and a six-LED animation.

Compatibility: SAINTCON 2025 Nut

Source

Operational history

Issues & Camp Impact

game server dependency low

The badge and Nut firmware point at a game API on sc25.redactd.dev for check-ins, points, node unlocks, and OTA. A request on November 1, 2026 got no response.

The Nut check-in and scoring loop probably cannot be repeated with stock firmware unless someone runs a compatible server; the local hardware and community firmware are unaffected.

Confidence: designer firmware and one request
Status: post-event game functions depend on an external server
Timeframe: after SAINTCON 2025
Source note: Firmware/badge/components/api/include/api.h and Firmware/nut/components/api/include/api.h in compukidmike/Saintcon2025, plus a request to sc25.redactd.dev on 2026-11-01.

missing rights-cleared image note

No SAINTCON 2025 badge image is published. The designer repository's SC25Badge.png has no licence. The MIT-licensed community firmware carries a byte-identical copy, but that licence comes from the firmware author, not the image's owner, so it does not clear the image. The archived official pages give no image licence either.

The entry stays source-backed and image-free until a rights-cleared photo or an explicitly licensed render is available.

Confidence: local project policy
Status: needs licensed original replacement
Timeframe: current catalogue build
Source note: compukidmike/Saintcon2025, BrainVirus/SAINTCON2025-FoxHuntBadge, and the archived SAINTCON BadgeLife page, checked 2026-11-01.

official documentation and distribution gap note

The archived official pages confirm the badge, its team, and the badge game but give no specification, attendee count, badge quantity, or allocation rule. Every hardware and firmware detail comes from the designer repository, and the support note about solder bridges does not say which parts attendees soldered.

The record treats the repository as the designer's own primary evidence and leaves production numbers, distribution scope, and any assembly step open.

Confidence: archived official pages
Status: hardware known from the designer; allocation undocumented
Timeframe: October 21-24, 2025
Source note: Archived SAINTCON homepage and BadgeLife page plus compukidmike/Saintcon2025, checked 2026-11-01.

repository licence gap note

The designer repository publishes schematics, BOM, Gerbers, KiCad files, STL files, and firmware but has no licence file, and the README offers to answer questions without granting reuse terms.

The files document the hardware and firmware, but reuse, modification, and redistribution rights are unclear.

Confidence: GitHub metadata and repository tree
Status: no licence file
Timeframe: as of 2026-11-01
Source note: compukidmike/Saintcon2025 repository metadata, checked 2026-11-01.

Resources

BrainVirus/SAINTCON2025-FoxHuntBadge community alternative firmware · Unofficial MIT-licensed PlatformIO firmware published October 31, 2026 that tracks 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi access points or Bluetooth LE transmitters by RSSI, with a display HUD, a 20-LED signal meter, and a serial CLI. The README marks it as work in progress and developed with AI assistance. PugTechnology/saintcon25-pug-pet community alternative firmware · Unofficial MIT-licensed ESP-IDF 5.5.1 pet game by David Vasquez, published November 1, 2026. It installs into the badge's spare ota_1 app slot beside the original firmware, keeps saves in the ST25DV NFC EEPROM, and also builds for the browser. SAINTCON 2025 BadgeLife community (archived) archived official badge page · Internet Archive capture from November 9, 2025 of the official BadgeLife community page, crediting compukidmike, redactd, v0rtex, BP, and Mike's Wife and describing the badge game, the Klippy AI storyline, the wrench design hint, support, and a booth MiniBadge. SAINTCON 2025 Nut firmware game station firmware · ESP-IDF firmware, version 1.2.0, for the ESP32-C3 Nut stations with PTX105R NFC reader, MCP23x17 expander, rotary input, and LED components. SAINTCON 2025 Nut hardware files game station hardware · Schematic, Gerbers, and KiCad files for the NFC Nut game stations, plus STL files for the printed nut, base, ring, and button. SAINTCON 2025 badge firmware firmware source · ESP-IDF badge firmware, version 0.2.1, with LVGL interface, badge game, faction and Nut tables, API client, OTA, NFC, MiniBadge, battery, secure-element, and Dawn Accord components. SAINTCON 2025 badge hardware files hardware design files · Schematic PDF, final BOM PDF, Gerber archive, and KiCad project archive for the wrench badge. SAINTCON 2025 badge in the browser community browser emulator · SAINTCON Badge Museum build of compukidmike's original 2025 firmware compiled to WebAssembly from a pinned commit, with the pug pet as a second mode. The museum's code is MIT; the badge firmware stays under its author's terms. Not affiliated with SAINTCON or UtahSAINT. SAINTCON 25 official homepage (archived) archived official event page · Internet Archive capture from November 3, 2025 of the official homepage, reading Goodbye, and Thank You from SAINTCON 25 above the October 21-24, 2025 dates and the Utah Valley Convention Center venue. Saintcon2025NutVolumeControl post-event station sketch · Arduino sketch added November 12, 2025 that turns a Nut into a Bluetooth LE keyboard named SC25Nut for volume and play/pause control. compukidmike/Saintcon2025 designer hardware and firmware repository · Repository created October 27, 2025, with the badge and Nut board files and firmware, a README describing the wrench badge and Nut game, and an AfterCon Nut sketch added November 12, 2025. It states no licence.

Sources