GrrCON
The planned September 24-25, 2026 GrrCON conference at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids. Its official volunteer terms say selected volunteers will be given a GrrCON staff badge and say dismissal revokes that badge, establishing a planned volunteer identity credential but not its physical form, electronic features, technical function, individual selection outcome, or delivery. Attendee research published September 26-28, 2026 documents the 15th-anniversary ATtiny1616 electronic badge and its hidden serial challenge, which corroborates that the conference was held, but the official homepage still read pre-event with active ticket links and no wrap-up on October 1, so the edition is not marked completed on official wrap-up evidence.
DeVos Place, Grand Rapids, Michigan · United States · 2026
A conservative planned GrrCON 2026 volunteer identity-artifact record from the organizer's official volunteer terms. The terms say selected volunteers will be given a GrrCON staff badge and say dismissal revokes that badge. The official home places the September 24-25 conference at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, but neither source establishes the badge's material, electronic form, technical function, completed issuance, or use by general attendees.
GrrCON's 15th-anniversary 2026 badge, documented after the September 24-25 conference by an attendee writeup and a published firmware dump, is a coin-cell electronic badge built around a Microchip ATtiny1616. Its artwork shows a green cat with a tentacle mane coiled around a circuit on an amber disc inside a bolted green ring, edged with green LEDs and a single yellow eye LED. A hidden 9600-baud serial console, reached by grounding one pin, asks for a secret code; the answer, rick astley, returns ACCESS GRANTED and a rickroll link. The writeup credits Dave Schwartzberg of Hak4Kidz as designer and challenge author.
Lifecycle
With a 3.3 V USB-serial adapter at 9600 baud, grounding pin 12 starts a probe, contact, handshake accepted sequence and an ASCII-art prompt asking for the full name of the person you see; rick astley returns ACCESS GRANTED and a bit.ly GrrCON15b link to a short video.
Holding the button while powering on prints Entering Sentinel Watch Mode on the console and switches the LEDs to a separate watch routine instead of the normal animation modes.
GrrCON's terms say that if selected to volunteer, a person will be given a GrrCON staff badge. The same terms say dismissal results in revocation of that badge. The wording does not identify a specific unit, physical form, ticket relationship, access mechanism, pickup procedure, or completed handoff.
Operational history
Owners should replace the coin cells rather than expect USB charging and follow the archive's wiring notes when exploring the console.
The United States record remains source-backed and image-free rather than copying source-page media, documentation screenshots, event photos, social media, placeholders, or generated approximations.
The entry stays image-free rather than copying writeup photos.
The record treats the badge as a real event artifact without asserting universal allocation, and the edition is not marked completed on official wrap-up evidence.
The record is deliberately modeled as a planned staff identity artifact rather than an electronic badge or a more specific physical credential unsupported by the organizer's public wording.
The catalogue records the organizer's explicit staff-badge commitment without treating it as a general-attendee badge, a verified access-control credential, proof of individual selection, or proof that any person has received a badge.