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An RGB Keyboard For Your Hackaday Communicator Badge

June 4, 2026 by 1 Comment

The most recent Hackaday event badge has been the Communicator, a handheld wireless terminal with a rather nice QWERTY keyboard. It’s good enough as delivered, but [makeTVee] has gone one better and made his Communicator keyboard into a fully RGB light-up experience.

The feat is achieved with the help of a new front panel holding some very thin side-emitting addressable LEDs. The keys are custom-printed, and there’s a TPU mat to hold them all together. The LEDs are driven from one of the device’s GPIOs.

We saw this badge in real life at the recent Hackaday Europe conference in Lecco, Italy. It really is as good as it looks in the video below, the care and attention which has gone into the build is extremely impressive.The original badge used a silicone cast set of keys, and we’d say if you are making a device with a keyboard then these might make a very good option.

If you’re not familiar with the Communicator, it’s worth having a look at the launch announcement.

Continue reading “An RGB Keyboard For Your Hackaday Communicator Badge” →

The 2026 EMF Badge Arrives, With An Add-On. As Expected, It’s Familiar

June 2, 2026 by 7 Comments

Two years ago the EMF hacker camp in the UK released a new kind of event badge. The Tildagon was designed to be a recurring event badge, useful for the next EMF rather than destined to be e-waste. With the 2026 event coming up there’s a new Tildagon called the Spaceagon, and as you might expect it’s very familiar indeed.

Tildagon owners can update their badge with the Spaceagon front panel (Update — The EMF badge team would like us to inform you that the final badge art will differ from the prototype badge shown), while those without one can buy the new badge. It has a few minor updates from its predecessor, including better buttons, LEDs, and display mounting, and there’s a compass, a joystick, and touch sensitive areas.

The Tildagon introduced its own add-on format, the Hexpansion. This year there’s the first official Hexpansion, a keyboard, using the same rubber moulding we see on quite a few maker projects. We like the Hexpansion idea because it uses an edge connector rather than a set of pins on the device, but at the cost of more expensive badge parts.

If you’re going to EMF you should be able to order yourself a Spaceagon, or an upgrade kit if you already own a Tildagon. Meanwhile we covered the 2024 version back when it arrived, and surprisingly this isn’t the first keyboard add-on for it either.

2026 Hackaday Europe: Pre-party, More Workshops, And Everything Else

May 12, 2026 by 10 Comments

With Hackaday Europe no more than two days away, we want to help you wrap up all of the last loose ends. And that means last-minute changes in the workshop schedule, details on the Friday night pre-party, and more! Some tickets for the event itself, the workshops, and the pre-party (reservations required) are still available right here.

Pre-Party, Friday May 15th

Kick off the weekend with us at the official Hackaday Europe pre-party at Soqquadro Restaurant, Piazza Era 7, 23900 Lecco, Italy. Enjoy the Italian aperitivi on the gorgeous Lago di Lecco waterfront. Your ticket includes two drinks and an array of delicious snacks. It’s the Italian way to pregame the weekend ahead. Bring a hack, or just relax and hang out. Your choice. Either way, make sure you pre-register. (On the preregistration page, scroll all the way down past the workshops.)

Workshops

Unfortunately, the Let’s Mesh workshop has been canceled, but the good news, thanks to our incredible sponsors, we’ve added two great new workshops to the lineup. On Saturday, May 16th, we’ll have Tiny Tapeout, When Code Needs a Body, and Fault Injection 101. Sunday features EchoGlow: Arduino UNO Q Workshop with the brand-new Arduino Q devices, from 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM.

Tickets and full descriptions are available at registration.

Lightning Talks

On Sunday afternoon, we’ll dedicate some time to Lightning Talks. These are short, seven-minute talks, with or without slides, on whatever interests you at the moment. If you’ve got hacks or deep thoughts to share with us, you’ll never find a more receptive audience. Register now! Talk slots are FIFO.

Thanks, and See You Soon!

If you’ve never attended a Hackaday event before, we’re excited to see you. Half the fun is the crowd that convenes. If you want to bring along a hack to informally show-and-tell, it’s a great icebreaker. You won’t have to bring food or drinks – we’ve got that covered all weekend.

If you’re an old Hackaday hand, we’re stoked to see you again! A first at Hackaday Europe is going to be whatever large fraction of our SAO collection fits into carry-on luggage, and a sweet-looking SAO wall made by Hackaday Superfriend [Thomas Flummer]. If you have an SAO that you’d like to add to our pile, bring it along! It’s about time for us to do a photo gallery and write-up of everything we’ve got.

And we can’t leave without thanking our broad array of sponsors who make Hackaday Europe possible:

Hackaday Europe: Last Round Of Speakers, Workshops

April 28, 2026 by 3 Comments

If you don’t already have your tickets to Hackaday Europe, pick them up now. The clock is ticking! Today, we’d like to announce our keynote speaker, the remainder of our featured talks, and two more workshops. (And if you want workshop tickets, which always go fast, get those soon!)

Hackaday Europe is super excited to welcome back Hackaday Superfriend [Sprite_tm] to kick off the event with a keynote talk on how he made a retrogaming PC from bare silicon. Don’t miss it.

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VCF East And Maker Faire Make For A Busy Weekend

April 23, 2026 by 15 Comments

For those of us with an interest in hacking and making, events where we can meet up with like minded folks and check out the projects they’re working on don’t exactly happen every day. Unless you’re able to travel around the country (or even better, the world), you usually have to make do with the handful of annual events that are within a reasonable distance of your home. If you’re lucky that may give you two or three opportunities during the year to look forward to, generally spaced out enough that you’ve got adequate time to prepare ahead of the event and decompress afterwards.

But occasionally, the planets and geekdoms align. Such was the case this past weekend in the Northeastern United States, with Vintage Computer Festival East and the Philadelphia Maker Faire taking place simultaneously. Both are established must-see events for their respective communities and cover roughly the same geographical area, so if you happened to have a foot in each camp, this presented quite a difficult decision.

That is unless you took the third option. As the Philly Maker Faire was on Sunday and VCF took place over the span of the whole weekend, there was a narrow path to attend both events. It wouldn’t be ideal, of course. For one thing it would mean speed running VCF East, and there was a couple hundred miles of travel to contend with. We won’t even talk about the physical toll incurred — while there doesn’t appear to be any official dosage recommendation from the Surgeon General, surely this level of exposure to non-conforming technologists carries with it some risks.

But sometimes such sacrifices must be made, especially if you’re being paid to make them. So I packed up twice the normal number of Wrencher stickers, and hit the road in an effort to deliver a condensed version of my experience at these two fantastic events.

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2026 Hackaday Europe: First Round Of Speakers Announced!

April 7, 2026 by 3 Comments

Hackaday Europe is the continental version of the Ultimate Hardware Conference, taking place May 16th and 17th, and you need to be there! We’ll continue to announce speakers and workshops over the next couple weeks, because we got so many more great talks than we had anticipated that we’re negotiating for extra time.

This year, we’re moving to a new venue in Lecco, Italy, and it’s sure to be fantastic. Get your tickets now before it’s too late. And stay tuned for another round of talk reveals next week!

Continue reading “2026 Hackaday Europe: First Round Of Speakers Announced!” →

Hackaday Europe Tickets On Sale Now, CFP Extended

March 18, 2026 by 10 Comments

Hackaday Europe is approaching, and we’re putting tickets on sale now. “But wait, you haven’t selected the talks yet!” we hear you saying. Indeed! And that’s why we discount the first round of entries for our True Believers™ – the hard core who know that it’s going to be a fantastic event and turn up regardless. So if you want to come to Hackaday Europe on the cheap, go snap up your ticket before they’re gone.

Call for Participation Extended

Of course, giving a talk is always the best way to attend a hacker gathering like this. And we know that we said that today was the deadline for talk submissions. But we also know that many of you have advanced degrees in procrastineering, so we’re giving you a week’s extension.

Selected speakers get in free, and we’ll reserve you an early-bird ticket for putting together a legit talk proposal either way. So if you’re a first-time presenter or a wizened pro, and you have something that you’d like to say to an audience of like-minded hackers, we’d all like to hear from you. We won’t extend the deadline twice, though, so get your proposal in before March 25.

(A few people have reached out to us, wanting to avoid the Google login that the above form requires. If you’re in the same camp, write to us directly and let us know!)

Hackaday Europe

In case you don’t know, Hackaday Europe started out as a bi-annual event that we first held a decade ago in Belgrade. It has been such a success that we’re now doing it every year, and leap-frogging around Europe to spread the love. The last two three events have been in Berlin, and this is our first time in Lecco, Italy. This year, it runs the weekend of May 16th and 17th, with a pre-event on the evening of the 15th, to be announced.

What stays the same? We have a fantastic crowd who bring their passion projects with them, a fun badge to hack on, and of course food, drink, music, and merriment all along. Oh, and the talks. (You are submitting your talk, right?)

We’ll have more details coming your way in the next few weeks, so stay tuned. After March 25th, we’ll get to selecting talks, and let you all know. Get your tickets now – we can’t wait to see you all in eight-and-a-half weeks!