cost may well be less than the expedited shipping fees and
Customs charges we’ve had to pay in the past.
By the Numbers
All told, the DEFCON 17 badge project took 186
hours. The majority of time was spent on firmware design
which is not surprising as I had to familiarize myself with
the features of Freescale’s MC56F8006 and learn about
FFTs and how to implement them. The pie chart shows the
time dedicated to each aspect of the project.
A total of 6,694 badges were manufactured with seven
unique badge shapes:
Time breakdown
of the DEFCON
17 badge.
50
July 2010
• Human ( 5,844 pieces)
• Goon (200)
• Press (200)
• Speaker (200)
• Vendor (100)
• Contest Organizer (100)
• Uber/VIP (50)
The cost per badge was $7.05, not including taxes or
shipping. The highest priced line item was the PCB
fabrication, manufacturing, assembly, and testing at $2.70
per piece (very reasonable considering the complicated
routing and additional silkscreen steps). The microprocessor
and microphone cost $1.50 and $1.00, respectively. Both
Freescale and Knowles Acoustics gave us great quantity
discounts even though our quantities were relatively small
compared to their typical accounts.
Until Next Year ...
At the conference’s closing ceremonies, a DEFCON
organizer spurred on thousands in the crowd to chant
“BADGES BY CHRISTMAS, PLEASE!” with the hope that
next year’s badges would be completed eight months in
advance. Well, that’s easier said than done and since no
one knows for sure what sort of problems I’ll encounter
with the DEFCON 18 badge design, we’ll all just have to
wait and see if I can pull it off! NV
