35c3 is the 35th Chaos Communication Congress, this year held in Leipzig with an expected attendance og more than 15.000 hackers from around the world. It’s a 4 day event, that runs day and night and has a mix of great talks, workshops, meetups, partying and all sorts of hacking in the large hackcenter with colored lights and fast network connection.

There has not been a tradition for electronic badges at these events and there isn’t an official badge like is the case at DEFCON, but this year, I decided to make an indie badge for Labitat, that was designed to follow the theme and artwork guidelines for the event.

The catchline for this year is “Refreshing Memories” and the artwork is electronic schematics diagrams shown in a blue and green color on a dark black background.

After thinking about the theme for some time, I decided to make a board with a very simple flip-flop (also known as an SR latch), since that is one of the core building blocks in modern computing and one of the simplest forms of electronic memory - just one single bit.

The badge shows the diagram of the circuit on the front, using the different layers on the PCB for the artwork and has the actual functioning circuit on the back.

Like many other electronic badges this year, this badge is using reverse mount LEDs, that shine through the PCB and use the fiberglass as a diffuser. In addition to the two orange LEDs that are part of the active circuit, there are also 20 LEDs (10 green and 10 blue), that simply illuminate the artwork providing a blue and green glow similar to the graphics styles of the 35c3 theming.

If you have gotten a kit, please have a look at the assembly instructions for the 35c3 badge, since some components have been used a bit outside their original intended use, and can be a little tricky to mount without guidance.

If you want to have a look at the design files for the badge, the KiCad project is available on Github