On the face of it, making an event badge should be a simple process. After all, most of us can assemble a microcontroller, some buttons, a battery and a screen by hand. But anyone who has been involved in the production will tell you, the difference between producing one or two, and making sure that hundreds or even thousands are fully functional on the day of the event is huge. [Nicholas Ficara] produced 1750 of his first badge for Canada’s Hack The North Hackathon, and he shared the whole story.
We’ve been involved with the pregnancy of more than one badge here at Hackaday, so we recognize some of its learning moments only too well. He approached it with a well-planned series of prototype and release candidate steps to catch the problems that came in handy because there were certainly a few. Wrong footprints, misplaced components, power supply issues and rotated parts were fixed, and finally they were delivered on time. It is good to see that they were well received and put to good use at the event.
If you are thinking of making a badge, we can certainly recommend you read this. A few years ago, we wrote the story of another badge whose creators did a lot of work to save it from a more serious part failure.