TROOPERS11 · Germany · 2011

TROOPERS11 Nixie Badge

Nixie-tube hacker conference badge

A source-backed early TROOPERS electronic badge built around a glowing nixie-tube digit, a programming station for badge scores, a Cat-5 LANyard switch, and hidden capacitive-touch and pad-field hack surfaces.

TROOPERS Germany Nixie Cat-5 Capacitive Touch Conference Badge Hardware Hacking Heidelberg

EventTROOPERS11

SeriesTROOPERS

LocationHeidelberg

CountryGermany

People

Authors & Credits

TROOPERS11 badge designer

Jeffrey Gough

Hackaday credits Jeffrey Gough for the TROOPERS11 badge.

Source

Why It Mattered

TROOPERS11 is an important pre-Badge.Team German security-conference anchor: it shows badgelife already combining spectacle, puzzles, lanyard hardware, and deliberate hardware hacking years before the later ESP32 and SAO-heavy TROOPERS records.

Hardware

Hackaday's 2011 coverage documents a nixie tube, a score programmer, a Cat-5-based LANyard switch, a secret capacitive touch sensor, and small prototyping or contact-pad fields. The current public source set does not include a schematic or BOM, so the record avoids unverified MCU, power, and high-voltage-driver details.

Software & Apps

The public evidence describes badge behavior and score programming rather than a recoverable firmware repository. Software claims should stay at the interaction level until original firmware, schematics, or a creator archive is recovered.

Lore

The badge challenged attendees to collect digits from 0 to 9, while the LAN cable through the board turned the lanyard into part of the interaction. Spanish attendee coverage and official TROOPERS archive context make it a real event artifact rather than a detached one-off electronics demo.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

badge challenge surface historical

Score programmer and hidden touch target

Hackaday documents a score programmer, a 0-to-9 digit collection challenge, a secret capacitive touch sensor, and pad fields intended for attendee hacking.

Compatibility: TROOPERS11 Nixie Badge

Source

lanyard interaction hardware historical

Cat-5 LANyard switch

The badge used a Cat-5 cable through the board as a LANyard switch, making the physical lanyard part of the badge interaction.

Compatibility: TROOPERS11 Nixie Badge

Source

Operational history

Issues & Camp Impact

missing rights-cleared image note

No reusable original TROOPERS11 badge photo has been cleared in this pass.

The catalogue publishes the record without a badge image until an original licensed photo can replace it.

Confidence: project image provenance
Status: needs licensed original replacement
Timeframe: current catalogue build
Source note: Project image provenance.

source-depth caveat note

The current source set documents the badge concept and attendee-facing hardware, but does not recover original schematics, firmware, BOM, or a complete creator archive.

The dossier preserves the badge without inventing chip-level or high-voltage design details that are not present in the public sources.

Confidence: secondary article plus event archive
Status: needs original design files
Timeframe: post-event archive
Source note: Hackaday article, TROOPERS11 archive, official Flickr set, and ERNW/TROOPERS follow-up announcement.

Resources

Nixie Tube Conference Badge hardware article · Hackaday coverage of the TROOPERS11 badge, its nixie display, programming station, Cat-5 LANyard switch, capacitive touch trick, and hacking pads. TROOPERS11 event archive event page · Official TROOPERS11 archive page for conference context. TROOPERS11 official Flickr set photo archive · Official TROOPERS photo set for the 2011 event. TROOPERS12 CFP follow-up mailing-list archive · ERNW/TROOPERS announcement pointing readers back to the previous year's badge.

Sources

Full Disclosure / ERNW: TROOPERS12 Call for Papers Retrieved 2026-05-15 · Post-event lineage source that references the previous year's badge. Hackaday: Nixie Tube Conference Badge Retrieved 2026-05-15 · Main public source for badge behavior, puzzle framing, LANyard hardware, capacitive touch, and hack pads. TROOPERS: TROOPERS11 Retrieved 2026-05-15 · Official event archive for the Heidelberg conference edition. TROOPERS / Flickr: TROOPERS11 official Flickr set Retrieved 2026-05-15 · Photo archive for the event context.