A Challenge Badge Memoir

Today, my former colleagues at Field Effect each received their 2022 Challenge Badge at their Christmas get-together. While I wasn't there to participate in person, I was definitely there in spirit - for creating this particular challenge badge was a bit of a labour of love that occupied nearly all of my spare time throughout 2022. I hope you all enjoy it!

It features a dual-core ESP32, 16MB flash, OLED display, Wifi, Bluetooth, USB, 3-axis accelerometer, LEDs, pushbuttons and a rechargeable LiPo battery. I used the open-source Kicad tool for schematic capture and PCB layout. And of course, the PCB is in the shape of the Field Effect logo! The board is Arduino compatible, although I programmed the current firmware and challenges in C using the ESP-IDF framework. Aside from the CTF challenges, I ported the Flappy Bird game to the board as well - let me know if you beat my high score of 31.

Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. The board is a versatile and powerful tool that I think will be well-received. The code will be made available to participants and the board can always be re-flashed with Arduino, MicroPython or any other firmware of choice. I am already planning to make a few changes and improvements to the design and firmware. And I'm excited to see what others will do with this platform.

Shoutout to Patrick Smith, CD for talking me into this project in the first place and then taking the reigns after my departure and for doing a fantastic job of polishing off the last couple challenges.

Merry Christmas!