THOTCON 0xA / Infinity · United States · 2019

THOTCON 0xA / Infinity Badge

DePaul IRL ESP32 badge with capacitive pads, LEDs, speaker, and microphone

The THOTCON 0xA / Infinity badge was a Chicago electronic conference badge produced with DePaul's Idea Realization Lab for the May 3-4, 2019 event. DePaul Newsline reported a six-month, 1,700-unit custom circuit-board badge build; the public Poplicola repository documents a SparkFun ESP32 Thing Dev base, five capacitive touch pads, six LEDs, speaker output, microphone input, stock-firmware restore commands, and Arduino examples.

THOTCON United States Chicago DePaul IRL ESP32 SparkFun ESP32 Thing Dev Capacitive Touch LED Speaker Microphone Arduino Audio Streaming Workshop North America

EventTHOTCON 0xA / Infinity

SeriesTHOTCON

LocationUndisclosed location, Chicago, Illinois

CountryUnited States

People

Authors & Credits

badge production lab

DePaul Idea Realization Lab

DePaul Newsline identifies the Idea Realization Lab as the badge-production group for the THOTCON Infinity sponsorship.

Source

badge sponsor and event commissioner

THOTCON Infinity

DePaul Newsline frames THOTCON Infinity as the outside sponsor commissioning the 2019 custom circuit-board badge run.

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badge workshop presenter

Rudy Ristich

InfoconDB lists Rudy Ristich as a THOTCON 0xA badge workshop presenter and describes him as Vice President at Workshop 88.

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badge workshop presenter and repository publisher

Jay Margalus

InfoconDB lists Jay Margalus as a THOTCON 0xA badge workshop presenter, and the public repository is published under the same Poplicola account used for the source trail.

Source

public badge example archive publisher

Poplicola

The GitHub repository preserves the public THOTCON 0xA workshop, firmware, LED, SoundBoard, AudioStreaming, and stock-restore material.

Source

Why It Mattered

It fills the gap between THOTCON's 2017 tesserHack board and 2025 touch-wheel badge with a documented high-volume university lab collaboration, public workshop trail, and hackable ESP32 audio/touch/LED platform used for badge hacking at the event.

Hardware

The repository README says the 0xA badge runs on a SparkFun ESP32 Thing Dev board. It maps five capacitive touch pads to right/up/left/down/select, six LED outputs to left ear, left eye, left mustache, right ear, right eye, and right mustache positions, plus speaker, microphone, microphone clock, and microphone word-select pins.

Software & Apps

The public `poplicola/Thotcon0xA_Pub` archive includes stock-firmware restore commands, Arduino setup guidance, LED examples, a SoundBoard example using XT_DAC_AUDIO, audio-file conversion notes, an AudioStreaming example using the badge microphone, binary artifacts, and a workshop PDF. InfoconDB preserves the May 3, 2019 `Hacking the Thotcon 0xA Badge` workshop description covering board layout, components, and some badge code without puzzle spoilers.

Lore

DePaul Newsline frames the badge as the first outside sponsorship for the Idea Realization Lab, with THOTCON Infinity commissioning 1,700 custom circuit-board badges. The THOTCON workshop was presented by Jay Margalus and Rudy Ristich and told attendees to bring laptops, cables, and badges for hands-on badge hacking.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

audio firmware public example

Speaker SoundBoard example

The public archive includes a SoundBoard example mapping sounds to three capacitive touch pads through the XT_DAC_AUDIO library.