MKFactor Badge Talk
A technical talk detailing circuit board design, custom firmware, and puzzle challenges embedded in the MKFactor badge.
Summary
Silk interviews the hardware creator behind MKFactor, the team responsible for designing the official electronic badges for DEF CON 30. The designer discusses creating ten distinct badge variants—including Goon, Human, Speaker, CFP, Village, Contest, and Press, alongside the elusive Uber badge—each programmed with custom audio samples, distinctive silkscreen art, and an integrated cassette mixtape theme.
The interview covers the badge's sampling keyboard architecture, detailing how the built-in microphone and line-in jack allow attendees to sample ambient sounds and pitch-shift them across capacitive touch pads (01:30). At 02:30, they explore the SAO (Simple Add-On) connector and describe custom hardware choices, including a specially manufactured top-mounted display cable (05:00) and an RP2040 microcontroller dedicating an entire core to 125 MHz capacitive touch polling (13:10). The creator explains circuit design compromises forced by supply chain shortages, humorously demonstrating why connecting the line-out directly into the line-in causes the differential audio amplifier to short circuit (02:00, 10:00).
(AI summary — Gemini Flash)
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