so we're in the
badger operations center at emf 2018 and
today we're handing out the tilde mark
delta badges this year's badge is a gsm
phone we've built an entire phone on our
badge this year
we've deployed
a
our own gsm network across the site
um so you've got a badge running micro
python with wi-fi
gsm phone and bluetooth headset
compatibility so you can use
connect inclusive headsets to it and
make phone calls
between badges
we think this is the first conference
badge gsm phone that's been deployed
we've spent the last six months two
years building this thing it's been very
late and a lot of it's been done in here
at the festival finishing off soldering
antennas flashing firmwares writing code
up until the last minute and we're
finally handing out to attendees today
and we're hoping everyone can sit and
write apps it's a evolution of the badge
from two years ago till the mark pi
which when i had the microphone on the
wi-fi so we've added the gsm on top you
take a cpu you take a wi-fi chip and you
take a phone module and you think oh
yeah we'll just put this on the board
and then you start adding buttons and
screens and sensors and um the the main
processor on this badge has 128 pins
we've used all of them plus a 16-pin
port expander to interconnect everything
and get them all talking together um
and there's been
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a lot of guys working on code we've
we've done a fresh port
of micropython to ti's latest msp432e
mcu um and ti are releasing that and our
version
of on top of that with the tilde board
it should be released and hopefully
somebody will get pushed back to
microfighter's main repository and yes
making the first phone call a couple of
months ago to jonty was like hello i'm
calling you from a badge and we finally
had the first badge to badge phone call
yesterday morning
is that possible
i don't know
i'm not sure because i haven't played a
lot with the software as the pcb
designer you you've got a full menu so
you can find the phone number i believe
nice how would they work when you get
designated
yes it's also tight it's tied into our
um
deck our onsite deck network so the
badges are getting a four or five
digit id which can be full call from the
dex network and it should be able to
find it in the phone app and make phone
calls and i
believe we can also do outside calls and
they should uh
incoming i'm not sure about um
we've got any ones that are working
covering up most of the stuff in the
center is the ti's uh
msp43432e processor
um to the right of that we have eight
megabytes of ram external so that we've
got a lot of
extra ram to allow the micro python apps
and the app developers because you can
write your own apps i've got a lot of
memory to play around with this year
just to the left here we have a one
megabyte serial flash chip that's where
all the apps are getting stored and
saved in the bottom right hand corner is
this is the all the wi-fi areas there
cc3120 which is their latest release of
their wi-fi chip
um
that's laid out
and over the left-hand side here we have
the
sim 800c gsm module the sim card the gsm
antenna which was hand soldered we have
the speaker
and we have the microphone and this is
the bluetooth headset antenna the
microphones have a hardware disconnect
so you can turn your microphone off so
you make sure no one's hacking your
badge and and listening in
the there's the processor and the sim
module of both hooked up to the speaker
microphone so
we're hoping someone's gonna be able to
do
from the cpu dial up modem
over over the in in band over the analog
with pwm signals and then do telex maybe
um we have thanks to seed studio who
sponsored the pcbs we have some grove
connectors which connect to c studios
grow sensor modules they do a hundred
different breakouts of stuff that can
plug in around the bottom we have some
pins broken out with serial ports and
i2c and some pins that these are for
doing conductive threads and wearable
stuff so sewing leds down your lanyard
and conductive threads down the lanyard
and again we've got the same pins broken
out on headers over here and then we
have usb to plug in for
a python console
and a mass storage access to the math
storage device um
and on the front buttons lots and lots
of buttons so we have a t9 cube pad laid
out joystick menu call n buttons and
then we have two neopixel leds so we've
got quite bright torch mode lots of
colors the previous badge had the same
top curve
but was straight across the bottom and
the screen was in in landscape and we
had the menu the a b and the joystick
buttons so yes we've grown the board and
we've still got a processor and a wi-fi
and we've bolted on the gsm
the processor itself has changed we had
an sdm32 two years ago
the wi-fi chip is the it's the next
generation we had the cc 3100 last year
this time we've got the 3120
we've doubled the battery size um to
allow to hopefully allow us to um
cover the extra power draw from the from
the gsm modem
and the wi-fi run at the same time um
there's a bunch of sensors thrown on
there for fun uh we've got temperature
and humidity
temperature tucked under there a hall
effect and there's a lux sensor on the
front for light levels when we're
developing the badge we keep everything
under wraps up until the last minute so
i think the
the announcement that we've built the
phone went out like on a blog post last
week
um a week before the event so that
people could start writing apps and
coming up with apps ideas um and all the
sensors were announced at the same time
but it's still surprising that there is
a there's an info booklet comes with the
badge um
which has got some snippets of python
code to go and test and and play around
with sensors and get you started um and
there's um some small soldering projects
there's a you can solder an led and
resistor and so we're doing some
soldering workshops here in the tent
this is one of the production panels and
we've had to visually inspect all of
these we've sat and looked at every
component there's about 216 components
on the back
per badge there's about 25 on the front
and we've had to look over them and find
components that have not been
placed properly or gone through the oven
misaligned or missing components and
because we're such a tight deadline
our assembly sponsor hcd were unable
they didn't have the time to do the
inspection automatically so we've done
it here on site so there's two of us
we've looked at every board 300 panels
about 2100 individual badges
out of two and a half thousand that
we're aiming for so
a lot which is where there's boxes here
of boards with pink dots where we've got
a fault on there 90 of them can probably
be fixed some of them missing components
it depends how hard it is to solder it
on some of them will be really tiny
things we can fix them
if we run low on the hand and out we can
start running through and fixing these
and some of them will just leave and
we'll fix after the event
um
and some of them if they're really bad
they'll just go in the bin
um
but yes we visually inspect them all
we've then
um
soldered the gsm antenna on we've then
been flashing the firmware on the gsm
module to enable the bluetooth headsets
because the default firmware doesn't
enable the bluetooth headset ability so
that's took
it takes around
a minute per badge
so two and a half thousand
minutes it's like 200 hours it's like
five days so we've had five laptops
going at it for a day and a half and got
through all of those fantastically once
we flashed the gsm firmware we then have
to flash our firmware onto the msp432e
the micropython port
and then it's kitted up into a bag
for a badge pcb we have a battery
a badge guide
[Applause]
screen
[Applause]
a velcro dot to stick your battery on
a lanyard and a hologram sim card and
the attendees get to put it together
themselves
which saves us a lot of effort a lot of
time that we haven't
and it's a lot of fun for people to put
them together
and
and then go play the past three badges
2014 was tilde mark e which was two
point
something something something which is
the speed of light constant 2016 badge
is tilde mark high because it was our
third badge so that's three point one
four one five nine so under the screen
on tilde mark pi it's prior to a
thousand decimal places that's the
version it's the version number of the
badge this year
we use irrational mathematical constants
um and this year it's a
tilde mark delta and the constant is
four point six point so and so and again
i've got a thousand decimal places uh
and this year it's um
bound delta constant
which is
related to
bifurcation population studies and
chaos theory stuff and i can't remember
the rest of it but find some math guys
they'll they can soon fill you in on
that one yes lots of numbers left on the
screen
these boxes make up the 128 pins of the
processor and all the interconnects so
these are all all these connections go
to elsewhere i suppose i cheated i'll
use my software skills for to do that i
actually wrote a program that converts
midi files