CactusCon
The January 27-28, 2023 Arizona hacker and security conference edition whose official event page anchors the Mesa event and whose Badge Pirates writeup documents the ESP32-S2 CactusCon 11 badge.
Mesa Convention Center, Mesa, Arizona · United States · 2023
The CactusCon 11 badge was an ESP32-S2 WROOM electronic conference badge by Badge Pirates and the CactusCon team, built around the event's Nightmare House theme, IoT interaction, LEDs, buttons, optional OLED support, GPIO expansion, and USB serial access.
Lifecycle
The hardware writeup documents two reverse-mount RGB LEDs, three individually addressable RGB NeoPixels, one reverse-mount red LED, and five input buttons.
The badge was designed around CactusCon 11's Nightmare House theme and home-automation interaction rather than a generic blinky-only board.
The badge writeup documents onboard CH340N USB serial access plus wireless firmware-pull behavior used during the conference.
Badge Pirates identifies the central controller as an Espressif ESP32-S2 WROOM with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi for the badge's IoT behavior.
Remaining GPIO pins were broken out, and a separate development board was available at the Hardware Hacking Village for extra components or functions.
Operational history
The entry remains source-backed and image-free rather than copying blog or event imagery without a clear catalogue reuse basis.
The record preserves production reality without overstating it into a failure or delivery controversy.
The catalogue records verified hardware and firmware-access surfaces while avoiding unsupported claims about the badge's full event game or OTA backend.