Flashing Lights: My DEFCON 32 Badge ROM Adventure
This year’s DEFCON 32 was a blast, but the real highlight for me was creating a custom ROM for the DEFCON badge that made all the LEDs flash.
Thursday: The Spark of an Idea
The DEFCON 32 badge, a beautifully intricate piece of hardware, was handed out on Thursday morning. It didn’t take long before I noticed something intriguing at the Queercon mixer that afternoon—someone had all nine of their badge’s LEDs lit up. By default, the badge only lets you control six of the nine LEDs, but there’s a hidden trick in the badge’s game to unlock the others.
Seeing those fully lit LEDs sparked an idea: What if I could make all of them flash?
Friday: Bringing the Vision to Life
Friday morning, still lying in bed, I decided to go for it. I joined the DC32 Badge Hacking Discord server at exactly 7:04 AM and dove straight into the code. My goal was clear—get all the lights flashing before the DEFCON villages opened at 10 AM.
It was a race against the clock. After two intense hours of coding, debugging, and testing, success came at 9:24 AM. The lights were flashing! I immediately shared my accomplishment on the Discord server, excited to see what others thought.
Wearing the badge around DEFCON, I couldn’t believe how many people came up to me, fascinated by the flashing lights. It was clear this needed to be shared. So, before the parties kicked off, I went back to my hotel room, cleaned up the code, and published the ROM at 7:49 PM. By 8:10 PM, I saw the first badge in the wild running my ROM—a surreal and proud moment.
Saturday: The ROM Takes Off
Saturday was when things really took off. I counted 13 people, including two DEFCON goon, with their badges running my ROM. Seeing others enjoy the flashing lights I created was incredibly rewarding.
I spent Saturday cleaning up the code further and published the source code that night.
Conclusion
This experience was a reminder of how creativity and community come together at DEFCON. From the spark of an idea at a mixer to seeing it light up badges across the con, this ROM was a highlight of my DEFCON 32 experience. If you missed out, don’t worry—you can still grab the code and light up your badge here.