Badge Clinic

Hardware hacker and badge designer Michael Schloh von Bennewitz (msvb) hosts an interactive Badge Clinic session in the Monero Village during DEF CON 28 Safe Mode, demonstrating circuit analysis and firmware programming for custom conference electronic badges [00:00]. Utilizing a high-definition close-up circuit camera, Michael walks through the component layout, printed circuit board (PCB) traces, and electrical schematics of recent conference hardware badges and prototypes [19:49].

The presentation explores the hardware architecture of contactless NFC/RFID badge systems, examining microcontroller selection, EEPROM memory storage, and surface-mount antenna coil design [47:38]. Michael details the communication protocol and custom opcode instruction set designed for the badge network, explaining how badges exchange data packets to track village participation across Biohacking, Rogues, Monero, Red Team, IoT, and Crypto & Privacy villages [29:21, 38:32]. He demonstrates how the firmware assigns and stores Factory Unique Identifiers (FUD) and tracks cryptographic interactions [19:49].

Throughout the clinic, Michael answers community questions from the live stream, discussing PCB manufacturing tolerances, debugging surface-mount solder bridges, battery power management, and firmware flashing techniques [56:36]. The session serves as an instructional guide for hobbyists and electronic hardware designers creating interactive conference badges.

(AI summary — Gemini Flash)