Bug Bounty Village Badge

The Idea

I was asked by Bug Bounty Village co-founders Harley and Ariel to come up with a cool blinky badge for their inaugural village at DEF CON 32.

The starting point in the design was a no-brainer - their awesome village logo.

The Design

The logo presented a few key elements for which LED glow should be put. The eyes and laptop logo were a clear choice. However, the design needed more flashing elements. The background provided a nice opportunity to turn it into a matrix dropdown effect. So we can blink those alternatively.

The eye and laptop logo would be glowing from the backlit LEDs. However the matrix dropdown LEDs in the background needed to make a stronger impression so those points were drilled with a tiny hole through which the reverse mounted 1206 SMD LEDs would glow.

Designing the PCBs with all the details...

All of which would be powered by 2 CR2032 coin cells.

UV Printing the artwork...

Assembling an army of bug hunters...

Putting Everything Together

We discovered one funny thing about the UV Printing - since some of the badges were printed after the assembly, the printer coloured the top of the background matrix effect LEDs too though there’s no difference in their glow or intensity.

Special thanks to XBOW for sponsoring this badge and making it a reality.