Country dossier
Worldwide badge coverage for South Africa, grouped into seeded badges, event editions, add-ons, operational issues, resources, and evidence sources.
Seeded artifacts
433 MHz mesh-networked South African conference badge
A South African free security-conference badge built around an ATmega328 with Arduino bootloader, Nokia 5110 LCD, 433 MHz AM/OOK transmit and receive modules, LEDs, buttons, and a mesh-style interaction graph.
ESP8266 IR faction-game badge
A BSides Cape Town 2016 badge built around ESP8266, 128x64 OLED display, eight UI buttons, rear reset and program buttons, IR transmit and receive, level LEDs, faction RGB LED, USB-charged 600 mAh LiPo, schedule UI, challenges, and an organic faction game.
two-part ESP and CC1111 RF challenge badge
A BSides Cape Town 2017 badge system documented as two separate physical badges: a black flux-capacitor badge with an ESP chip and a red RF badge with a CC1111 RFCat-compatible radio, USB port, and button.
ESP32 colour-screen game badge
BSides Cape Town 2019's badge was an ESP32 electronic badge with a 1.3-inch 240x240 IPS colour display, touch buttons, 18650 battery, custom PCB, 3D-printed case, Arduino/ESP32 firmware, local SDL debugging support, WiFi high-score sync, Bluetooth GamePad experiments, and a public GPL-3.0 firmware repository.
South African BSides badge-sponsor identity artifact record
BSides Cape Town's official 2025 sponsorship page lists a dedicated Badge Sponsor slot, while the official Quicket page anchors the December 6, 2025 Lagoon Beach Hotel & Spa event and swag-ticket context.
Events
A free South African security conference represented by Andrew MacPherson's source-backed mesh-networked badge with 433 MHz RF interaction tracking.
A South African BSides edition whose ESP8266 badge used IR interactions, OLED UI, game factions, challenges, and post-event unlock tooling.
A South African BSides edition whose RFCat challenge writeup documents a two-part badge made from a black ESP-based flux-capacitor badge and a red CC1111 RF badge.
A South African BSides edition represented by source-backed evidence for an ESP32-WROOM-32U badge and surviving firmware references.
The December 6, 2025 BSides Cape Town edition whose official sponsorship page lists a dedicated Badge Sponsor slot and whose ticketing page documents the Lagoon Beach event and swag context.
Lifecycle
Later writeups treated the 2019 badge as an ESP32-WROOM-32U board suitable for C# NanoFramework and ESP32 game/video experiments.
The badge exposed unlockable games including two-player Pong and Rock/Paper/Scissors/Lizard/Spock badge-to-badge interaction.
Released client code implemented a half-duplex RF broadcast chat system for badges using RFCat, 868 MHz operation, sync words, modulation settings, queues, and retransmission.
A challenge-unlocked Warbadging mode scanned up to 30 nearby WiFi networks and displayed signal strength, ESSID, encryption type, and channel coverage.
The making-of post documents a colour GameOn-derived firmware with menu, single-player game, raycaster, voxel landscape, high-score JSON/WiFi workflow, setup screens, achievements, and debug screens.
The 2017 badge system included a black flux-capacitor badge with a 2AL3B ESP chip, WiFi capability, power-bank wiring, USB charging path, and rear buttons.
The red RF badge carried a CC1111 RFCat-compatible chip, USB port, button, and exposed rear contacts, becoming the radio surface for the 2017 challenge.
The challenge server used distinct RF settings, periodic hints, player-state persistence, 88-miles-an-hour and 1.21-gigawatts stages, and an XOR/base64 unlock payload for the final box.
Badges were assigned red, blue, or green factions and used IR interactions plus server-side logic to convert or level nearby badges during the conference.
The official Quicket page places the Redacted-themed event at Lagoon Beach Hotel & Spa on December 6, 2025 and offers swag-bag plus swag-ticket context without publishing badge design details.
The public repository preserves the badge firmware, ESP32 binary, assets, Arduino build settings, TFT_eSPI configuration, SDL local-debug path, games, demos, OTA code, WiFi scanner, and Bluetooth material.
External ICSP, RX, TX, and reset access made reflashing and serial extension possible, while special RF codes could store text in EEPROM or trigger visual effects.
The first-hand making-of post documents an ESP32 badge with 1.3-inch 240x240 IPS colour display, custom PCB, touch buttons, 18650 battery, and 3D-printed case.
After the conference, a badge-number form could output correct hashes to unlock all challenges and add-ons such as Pong, WiFi scanner, and animations.
Badges exchanged badge numbers and relationship data over short-range 433 MHz RF, then pushed interaction relationships toward a main PC graph.
The official 2025 sponsor page lists one dedicated Badge Sponsor slot for the event.
Operational history
The dossier preserves the real public badge-sponsor evidence while avoiding unsupported hardware or final-artifact claims.
The badge record preserves the production constraint instead of describing the hardware as a polished low-power device.
The dossier distinguishes the badge hardware from the off-badge development and challenge-server test setup.
The entry can now describe the badge hardware and firmware from primary sources while avoiding unsupported board-layout, production-run, or image-reuse claims.
The record preserves the source-backed two-part badge without inventing component-level details that are not public in the recovered sources.
The catalogue keeps the record image-free while preserving the source-backed badge existence and ESP32 core.
The record stays image-free rather than copying SensePost or blog imagery without complete provenance.
The record remains source-backed and image-free rather than copying event-site imagery, ticketing graphics, sponsor logos, social-media images, screenshots, or generated artwork.
The record remains text-and-source only until a licensed documentary photo can be added.
The record ships without imagery rather than copying mirrored photos or article images without image provenance.
The record documents the operational dependency that affects reuse of surviving badges.