The Trials And Tribulations Of Your First Badge

On the face of it, making an event badge should be an easy process. After all, most of us can hand-assemble a microcontroller, some buttons, a battery, and a screen. The Trials And Tribulations Of Your First Badge.

But anyone who has been involved in producing one will tell you, the difference between producing one or two, and making sure hundreds or even thousands appear on day one of the event fully working is enormous. [Nicholas Ficara] produced 1750 of his first badge for Canada’s Hack The North hackathon, and he’s shared the. We’ve been involved with the gestation of more than one badge here so we recognise some of his learning moments only too well.

He approached it with a well-planned series of prototype and release candidate steps to catch the problems, which came in handy as there certainly were a few. Wrong footprints, misplaced components, power supply issues, and rotated parts were fixed, and eventually they were delivered in time. It’s good to see that they were well received and well used at the event.