Hacker Con Badges

Hack the North

Hack the North 2026

The completed September 18-20, 2026 Hack the North edition at the University of Waterloo, anchored by the official Devpost page for the 36-hour invite-only 1000-student hackathon, whose QR-coded attendee badges and Solana Best Badge Hack prize confirm a hackable hardware badge, with attendee firmware archives documenting the ESP32-C3 platform. On October 13-14, 2026 Hack the North published the badge's KiCad hardware and GPL-3.0 firmware as open source.

Engineering 5, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario · Canada · 2026

Hack the North 2026 Hacker Badge

The Hack the North 2026 hacker badge, documented by the official Devpost event page, attendee firmware archives, and since October 13-14, 2026 by Hack the North's own open-source hardware and firmware repositories: an AA-powered ESP32-C3-MINI-1 board with a 320x240 ST7789 display, eight buttons, an SC7A20 accelerometer, an MFRC522 NFC reader, and WS2812B LEDs. It served as each hacker's ID and meal QR code, unlocked hidden apps by scanning flower-pattern stickers, swapped contacts by bumping badges over BLE, ran a Solana NFC scavenger hunt, and installs user Lua apps from a browser IDE.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

Operational history

Issues & Camp Impact

Hack the North 2026 Hacker Badge low

battery heat and travel safety · official attendee manual · documented safety guidance

The official manual tells hackers to switch the badge off immediately and bring it to the Badge Help Desk if the top, back, or left side near the USB port feels warm, to remove the batteries if it is very hot or damaged, to switch it off before connecting USB, and to remove the batteries before flying. Low batteries are also named as the usual cause of glitches.

Owners reusing the badge should follow the same power and battery precautions; the manual does not report any specific incident.

Hack the North 2026 Hacker Badge low

late screens and wearability · first-hand designer writeup · documented

On August 10, 2026, 25 screens from a bad supplier batch failed testing, leaving 1,725 boards ready; the designer told JLCPCB that around 1,600 working boards on time mattered more than 1,750 perfect boards late. In the post-event survey of 115 hackers, the top complaint (24 people) was that the badge, two AA cells on a bare board, was heavy and clunky to wear.

The record does not claim that all 1,750 badges reached hackers working on day one; the writeup does not say how the 25 late boards were handled.

Hack the North 2026 Hacker Badge note

organizer archive gap · official repositories and designer writeup · hardware and firmware published; BOM file and hardware licence absent

Hack the North published the KiCad hardware project and GPL-3.0 firmware on October 13-14, 2026, but the hardware repository has no licence and no BOM file, and both repositories were released as single squashed commits. The designer's October 13 writeup now gives the production quantity (1,750 populated plus 750 blank boards) and says the hardware is open source to use as licensed, without naming a hardware licence. The README's interactive BOM link points at a different GitHub account and was not used.

The catalogue cites organizer engineering detail and the designer's quantity directly and leaves hardware reuse terms open.

Hack the North 2026 Hacker Badge medium

pre-production assembly defects · first-hand designer writeup · fixed before the production run

The designer reports that in the EVT an inductor labelled 10u was filled with a 10 µF capacitor (shorted as a workaround) and the chosen NFC chip was a tag rather than a reader; an EasyEDA import problem then forced white-only silkscreen. In the 50-unit PVT, batteries inserted the wrong way turned the badge into a smoke machine and the NFC chip and one power chip were placed rotated, so every board was reworked by hand (all 50 ended up working). The production design added a reverse-polarity FET with a bypass jumper, and checking JLCPCB's placement render caught the new FET rotated before production.

The shipped production boards include reverse-battery protection; earlier prototype boards may lack it. The account is the designer's own and is not independently audited.

Resources

Doom on the Hack the North 2026 badge attendee app archive · Attendee Lua raycasting shooter built against the badge's documented sandbox APIs, confirming the stock Lua app sandbox and public badge API surface. goosepaint badge app attendee app archive · Attendee Hack the North 2026 badge app for creating 12x12 colored images, further corroborating the hackable badge platform distributed at the event. AP-Triangulation Badge Finder attendee firmware archive · Attendee ESP-IDF replacement firmware describing the badge hardware: ESP32-C3, 320x240 ST7789 display, eight buttons, SC7A20 accelerometer, WS2812B LEDs, stock Lua sandbox, and ESP-NOW peer-to-peer messaging. Crystal-esp32 community firmware · GPL-3.0 community project created October 19, 2026 that turns the badge into a standalone Game Boy Color handheld running Pokémon Crystal on a Peanut-GB fork, with asynchronous LCD DMA, flash saves, USB diagnostics, and game-driven RGB LEDs, tested on a physical badge. It does not include the game ROM. Hack the North badge emulator designer firmware emulator · Browser emulator linked from the designer writeup that runs the badge's real firmware compiled to WebAssembly. Making 1,750 programmable PCB badges for Canada's biggest hackathon designer post-event writeup · Nick Ficara's October 13, 2026 first-hand account of the badge project from a January pitch through EVT, DVT, PVT, and the production run at JLCPCB: 1,750 populated badges for hackers plus 750 blank boards for volunteers, about 20,300 USD in total, the design errors found at each stage, the overnight preparation, and usage and survey figures from the event. The Trials And Tribulations Of Your First Badge media coverage · Hackaday post by Jenny List, October 16, 2026, summarising the designer writeup: 1,750 badges, wrong footprints, misplaced components, power-supply issues, and rotated parts fixed before delivery, and badges that were well received and well used at the event. Hack the North badge Lua IDE official app IDE · Browser IDE linked from the official firmware README for installing Lua apps on the badge over USB without reflashing firmware. Hacker Badge Manual official attendee manual · Opening-ceremony manual covering AA power, button layout, the boot QR code used for check-ins and food, sticker scanning, badge bumping in the Connect app, sync stations at the Badge Help Desk, the Solana hunt, the Saturday Badge Workshop, care, and battery and heat safety. Hack the North 2026 Devpost official event page · Official Devpost page for the September 18-20, 2026 invite-only 36-hour hackathon at the University of Waterloo, with QR-coded attendee badge IDs in the submission rules and the Solana Best Badge Hack prize inviting attendees to build something creative with their Hack the North badge. hackthenorth/badge-firmware official firmware repository · Hack the North's GPL-3.0 ESP-IDF firmware for the 2026 Hacker Badge, published October 13-14, 2026, with the launcher, built-in apps and games, unlock progression, Lua runtime, Solana Scavenger Hunt BLE relay and server tools, web flasher, and docs. hackthenorth/badge-hardware official hardware repository · Hack the North's KiCad project for the 2026 Hacker Badge (schematic, PCB, and project files), published October 13-14, 2026 in an Open source hardware release commit. No licence file is included.

Sources

Hack the North / Devpost: Hack the North 2026 Retrieved 2026-09-26 · Official event source for the September 18-20, 2026 dates, Engineering 5 / University of Waterloo venue, 1000+ students in 36 hours framing, ended status, QR-coded badge IDs, and the 2,500 USD Best Badge Hack sponsor prize. Hack the North / GitHub: Hacker Badge Manual Retrieved 2026-10-15 · Primary organizer attendee-facing source for AA battery power, the QR ID used for check-ins and meals, sticker scanning, badge bumping, sync stations, the Badge Help Desk, the no-replacement policy, and heat and battery safety instructions. Hack the North / GitHub: badge-firmware Retrieved 2026-10-15 · Primary organizer firmware source (GPL-3.0, ESP32-C3 target, ESP-IDF 5.5.3) for the launcher and app order, unlockable apps, NFC and BLE features, the statement that the badge has no Wi-Fi or HTTP stack, the BLE extended-advertising scavenger-hunt protocol and relays, and the Lua app runtime. Hack the North / GitHub: badge-hardware Retrieved 2026-10-15 · Primary organizer hardware source: KiCad schematic titled Hacker Badge, rev 0.0.2, dated March 22, 2026, listing the ESP32-C3-MINI-1-N4, MFRC522, SC7A20, 74HC165 button shift register, WS2812B-2020 LEDs with level shifter, FPC display connector, USB-C, LM66200 power mux, MT3608 boost, XC6220 regulator, and AA battery holder. It does not state a production count or a hardware licence. Hackaday: The Trials And Tribulations Of Your First Badge Retrieved 2026-10-21 · Secondary media source corroborating the 1,750-badge quantity, the class of manufacturing errors, and on-time delivery. Nick Ficara / va3ndf.com: Making 1,750 programmable PCB badges for Canada's biggest hackathon Retrieved 2026-10-21 · Primary first-hand designer source for the production quantity (1,750 populated badges and 750 blank volunteer boards ordered June 30, 2026), JLCPCB assembly, cost (14,338.40 USD assembly order, 5,958.61 USD pre-ordered parts, 570.70 USD blanks), the PVT reverse-battery smoke and rotated NFC and power chips, the added reverse-polarity FET, the 25 screens that failed testing on August 10, distribution with a crash course at opening ceremonies, and closing figures of 11,700 badge bumps, 40,000 sponsor-table scans, 540 Solana blind-box scans, and 120 app hacks. It discloses partial JLCPCB and EasyEDA sponsorship. abigail-liang / GitHub: AP-Triangulation Badge Finder Retrieved 2026-09-26 · Primary hardware source for the ESP32-C3, ST7789 320x240 display, eight buttons, SC7A20 accelerometer, WS2812B LEDs, Lua sandbox, and ESP-NOW stack as described by an attendee who replaced the stock firmware. kashsuks / GitHub: doom-on-htn-badge Retrieved 2026-09-26 · Attendee app source confirming the documented badge APIs and Lua app sandbox that the stock firmware exposes.