Blinky Badges of Code Blue and AVTokyo

CODEBLUE 2019

The Design

This year was the first time Code Blue was having a soldering village so we knew we had to keep it simple and easy for everyone to participate in. And after few iterations of Ninja, Pikachu and Anime designs, we decided to make something that attendees can use for Halloween which was happening in the same week. This badge was made under merely just 2 days.

Starting with scary Halloween face, I wanted it to glow on both the sides of PCB.

Since the conference theme is in Blue, we coloured one side Blue and other in Black. We designed the scary smile as transparent PCB area without any masking and as a result, open PCB tracks look like veins.

We had a record-breaking response at soldering village and ran out of most kits on the first day itself. Attendees were provided with a choice of LED colours they want and also encouraged to solder the way they want - either normal or reverse.

Reserve mounted LEDs dispersed light better on both sides. We also kept an additional silicon glue gun to further improve light diffusion and almost everyone opted to go for it too.

And rumour has that plenty of people used them in Halloween decorations.

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AVTOKYO 2019

The Design

AVTokyo lives with the motto - "No Drink, No Hack". I wanted to build something which celebrates just that. And so I began to wonder what are limits of transparent (non-masked) PCB and if we can make it cocktail glass shaped design.

Pina Colada seems to be the right glass choice in terms of design weight balance.

Soldered with RGB flashing LEDs, it became the electronic cocktail rendition.

Plenty of these badges ended up on Christmas tree.

Code Blue and AVTokyo badges have been one of my experiment with transparent PCBs without any masking and using reverse mounted LEDs to make beautifully lit up badges.