 Hello, and welcome to another episode of Between Two Printers. My name's Katie, and today we'll be talking with this year's DEF CON badge makers, MK Factor. Hello, Michael. Thank you for being here. Glad to be here. To my knowledge, we're filming this before the badge is completely done, yes? Yes, about three weeks before DEF CON. Alright, so we can't be able to answer all of the questions, but we're going to try to do our best. So tell us a little bit about MK Factor. So MK Factor is our badge team, and I'm the M in MK Factor. I do a lot of the circuit board design and the code. So what about the K in MK Factor? Oh wait, that's me. I do graphic design and assembly. In February this year, DEF CON did something they've never done before. They have put out a call for badge makers. So what made you decide to apply? So we've made a lot of badges for different conferences, and we've joked in the past about wouldn't it be cool to do the DEF CON badge someday, and this was our chance, so we took it. Alright, and that process was definitely an emotional roller coaster. Yes, it was. Between the calls and each stage of the process was nerve-wracking. Yeah. It took about a month for DEF CON to decide which team they wanted to do their badge, and special shout out to ZevLag and Professor Plum for giving us some encouragement throughout this. We needed it. Yeah. Yeah. So when we were awarded the badge, how did you feel? Scared? Yeah. It's a big thing. Yeah, kind of just sat there, in shock, but it was the end of March, and that gave us four months to finish, and so we had to get our butts in gear. Yeah. We had a couple, not a couple, quite a few, snags while producing this badge, do you want to name a few? Yeah, so a lot of supply chain issues this year, for those who aren't aware, there's a worldwide chip shortage, which is all kinds of fun. So our main microcontroller, we changed three or four times. We would pick one that was available that fit our needs, and design a board around it, send out for prototypes, and before we even got them back, someone would buy all those chips. So in the end, we just decided to pick a chip that we figured would work for us and buy as many as we needed without even testing. Yeah. We felt kind of like anyone who's trying to buy a house right now. They were great. All right. So also another snag we had was keycaps. We had chosen which ones we wanted, and we found a supplier, and when it came time to order, they disappeared. So we had a big decision to be made, either change the keycap what we wanted or print our own and make what we wanted. So as you can tell, we chose to make our own. This way we were able to do our own personal designs and to be able to put DEF CON right onto the keycap. So we have about seven printers going all the time, printing keycaps. It's great fun. All right. We also have put together a little film of the process of making this badge. Roll the video. Hey. Welcome to the making of the DEF CON 29 badge. All right. Let's get started. Oh. So pretty. Love all the colors together. Yeah. So this is all the DEF CON badges minus the Uber. That one we're keeping a secret for now. Yep. So this is going to be about how we got here, how we made all these, the process, everything. First, let's talk about the badge you've got. So this is a human badge, obviously four keys, right? They are mechanical keyboard keys and they're blues because they're clicky and awesome. On the right side under the signal bars here is a touch slider and the default for that is controlling volume on your computer. The other ones are set as some defaults for controlling discord, but it's all changeable. You can modify it to be whatever you want. When you plug it into your computer, it will show up as a keyboard as well as a virtual comport. So you can connect to it with any serial terminal and change settings, change the keys, all that good stuff. In the booklet, you'll find some pre-made legends for you guys can use. They're to the size of the actual keycaps. Yep. The keycaps are in two parts, so they do pop open. So you can kind of see that a little bit. There are two, there's a little cap on there, you can pop off and then put a little piece of paper in there. Here they separate it and they just click back on. Yep. So as well as being a programmable keypad, there are some interactive things. Connect to your fellow attendees over the USB cable. So let's talk about that real quick. So the lanyard looks like this for the people in person and on this end pops out and it is a USB-C cable so that you can connect it to your computer. But also, the badges have USB-C and USB-A ports on them. So you can connect between badges and plug there, plug this into someone else's badge and we've got some games and other fun things you can do as well as some challenges built in there. All good fun. Alright, so for those of you who got virtual badges, your badges came without final code on them. We did that on purpose because there are challenges and all kinds of stuff associated with the badge. We want you guys to have a two-week lead time on everyone else. That's not very fair. Spoilers. So you guys have very basic code where you can change the keys and stuff like that but not much else. So to reprogram your badge, normally when you turn it on, all the lights light up and everything. If you hold this bottom right button, when you turn it on, it will go into a bootloader mode and when you connect it to your computer, it will show up as a flash drive and then you can just drag and drop the new firmware file onto it and it will reprogram it. So, we kind of talked about this a little bit already but we didn't have a lot of time to design this badge about four months and right before we got we knew we were going to do this, we had planned a trip to see some family across country. We drove cross country and this is Michael sitting there figuring out which microcontroller we wanted to use. Yeah, sitting in my mother-in-law's house with the laptop and an extra screen trying to design a badge. Going through schematics, figuring out if it's going to work and then I think we looked at two different microcontrollers while we were there and both were bought out before we could get them. It was great. It's too great. So, these are some of the early concept designs. Yeah, so we early on wanted something that would connect together and so we first originally thought, oh, we'll make like a circle, right, but that's done previously before and then we had the idea of Cuber and do a tessellating thing. So that's how we ended up with our design that we've chosen. So this was our first prototype. And there's Katie soldering it together. And no berms, so I think that's a win. Yeah, we were excited to see the tessellating happening. So this one on the right was our second prototype. And here a little sneak preview of the Uber sketches and things we were working on with that. All right, let's talk about keycaps and these printers. So our army of printers. Yeah, we got there. So we mentioned a little bit before we had a vendor who flaked on us about two months ago. Which didn't leave us with a lot of time to come up with other options. I reached out to a couple of dozen different companies that could make keycaps. And the story was either they couldn't do them in time or they couldn't do them in anything that was translucent or they wanted crazy amounts of money for them. So in the end, we decided to print our own. So we bought one printer to see if we could work. Yep, just to try it out. And we figured out what did and didn't work. See lots of different types of keycap designs we went through. The green stuff doesn't work on cleaning them. Well, it stains them. Super cool. Yep, especially if you want clear ones. Yeah. So in the end, it worked. We bought seven printers total. And we we named them all because then we could have something to yell at when they were not cooperating. We named all of our our compute like all the printers. And then we also named the vats that hold the resin in them. So that way we know which vats were broken and easier for communication. So all of our vats, we originally had seven. So of course, we went with seven dwarfs. And then we ended up getting two more printers. And that meant two more vats. So we went with Prince Charming and Snow White. And then our printer's names are. We got seven and Kit, Steve, Kaley, Kevin, Dave and Jarvis. Yep. So if you want to know more about that, because that will explain why we chose some of the names. Some I feel like are a little explanatory. So yeah. So another thing with the keycaps, we got to customize them. So every keycap has Def Con embedded in it right on the front of the keycap. So that's something we wouldn't have been able to do with any other manufacturer. One of the other big pluses to this is about a month ago, Dark Tangent came to us and said, hey, we're going to run out of badges before Def Con starts. What do we do? And the keycaps being one of the main pieces meant that we were producing them ourselves. So making more wasn't a huge problem. Whereas if they were being made by someone else, we would have been up a creek. Yep. So that's why we bought the second to the six and seven printer. So Dave and Jarvis. Yep. So this is what the keycaps look like right off the printer. You can see there's one missing here. So that one didn't print properly, which is a pain in the butt, because then you got to clean off the bottom of the bat. So many times. So what we do then is this is a removable metal plate here that's on a magnetic sheet. So we pull that off and put a new one on and set it to print again. And then this is our cleaning station. Oh, so fun. So we got each of that like bucket is filled with alcohol. We have our first bucket, which is there in. Primary rinse where it gets a lot of more resin into it. Yep. So let's soak there, help it release from the metal plate. Then we got a magnetic stir on the bottom of our second bucket. And it's a lot more cleaner. So that way it gives an extra wash. And then we will put it in a cup and fill it with alcohol, which is from our third bucket, which will have it has a filter to help keep it clean the whole time. And then we'll we'll cure it. That's the word I'm looking for. Yeah, this is the curing station and then put them out on a drying rack. We have a fan here running to dry them off. The fans everywhere. Ventilation is key when you're dealing with this much alcohol. Yeah, big fan on the window is yeah, the smell of the alcohol and the resin in here is not great. We're even using the plant based eco resin. It's not as smelly and still a lot. It smells so bad. We originally were curing in water, but that meant we had to completely dry our keycaps from the second wash of the alcohol. Otherwise, it reacted funny and would make a white it would make them turn white instead of clear. And then we have the realization, well, alcohol is clear like water. So we we figured out how to reuse the water. So that I wouldn't have all the particles or reuse the alcohol. So I didn't have any of the extra particles of cured resin. And that's worked brilliantly. It sped up the process so much more. So it's been fun, a lot of learning. Yeah, so with all that isopropyl alcohol, we use a lot of it to clean these parts. And it's expensive in large quantities. So we created a device to clean the alcohol. So my inner hawk eye is really proud. So what we do is we take this the dirty bucket of resin and alcohol mix. It gets pretty cloudy and nasty after a while. And we put it in this pot and then this bucket is full of water and we use our sous vide cooker. To bring it up to the proper temperature at which the alcohol will boil. Come through here. This one's full of water and it's got a coil of the coiled copper tube. And that cools the steam and then it collects in this bucket. And then we've got nice, fresh, clean alcohol. You can see behind us. We have a fresh thing of it right now. Yep. So we can reclaim about 75 percent of the alcohol that we use, which helps a ton in cost and time. Because running to the store to get the alcohol, that takes time and then you end up buying snacks. So that also takes money. So this saves us time and money. Yeah. So this in the middle, this is what's left after most of the alcohol boils off. The resin tends to congeal into this nasty stuff. Yummy. Yeah, which we then scoop out and then set it outside for it to dry. And that also cures the resin so that it can be thrown away safely. Speaking of resin, there's some mostly empty bottles. So once we've dumped everything out that we can, we leave them upside down for a few days so that everything collects in the bottom and then we can pour it all back into one bottle so we don't waste any. Yep. It's it's lots of fun just sitting there holding the bottles over each other. Super great, but it it's amazing how much you'll actually get out from doing that. And so that helps with cost as well. Yeah, especially with how much resin we're using. We're making fifty four thousand key caps and using. I think we've got 80 bottles of resin. And not like the little bottles. The big one liter bottles. It's a crazy amount. But we're almost there. Yeah. And of course, our kids have been helping. They love to help and play with the 3D printers and help us assemble badges and it's like Christmas all the time. We have packages showing up all the time. All right, so assembly. So these panels on the left, these are actually the first panels we got from our assembly house. This is how they come to us. And so we've got to break them apart, break off the rails on the sides, break them apart and then break off all these little tabs in between that hold them together. So we don't have any like flesh left on our fingertips. Yeah, that's right. So one of the things we ran into with the first boards is these little spring contacts here, there's three on each board and they connect to the touch slider on the top. And if you notice, these ones up here are a little bit shorter. They were damaged in shipping. So what happened is the panels sitting on top of each other squishing against each other and rubbing around during shipping squish those enough to permanently compress them. So they're too short to work anymore. So we worked with our assembly house and they came up with a really awesome way to ship these boards to us without them getting damaged. Thank you so much. We truly greatly appreciate all you do to keep them safe for travel. We really really appreciate it. Yeah, this connector up here is a little wonky. So another thing they did is add some little epoxy glue dots underneath these connectors to keep them down because we've got two sided assembly. So we do all this stuff on the top and then they flip over the boards and run all the bottom parts. And so these ones were so heavy, they were starting to fall out a little. I also want to give a shout out to PCVX who did our assembly. They have been amazing to work with. They've been able to fix things and change processes to make things work better. And having done overseas assembly, it's really, really nice to have someone in the states who I can actually talk to and they respond within minutes rather than half a day. And there's no language barrier. It's really, really nice to have someone in the states that's local and knows what they're doing. And he's very upfront with what he wants and what he needs. And we are we are really grateful to them. Yeah, and these edge connectors were another fun thing we found out too late. So even though we followed the manufacturer footprint exactly, what was happening is the surface tension of the solder on these pads and the ones underneath were pushing these off the edge of the board just enough to where this little lip falls down off the front. And so the connectors are angled down just a little bit, which it doesn't really matter. They work just fine. It's just not perfect. We don't have OCD issues. It's fine. And this is one of those things where if we had more time, we would have run some test boards and panels ahead of time. But with such a short schedule, we didn't have that option. So they're all like this, but they work and it's just fine. I'm pretty happy. Yeah, they're done. Yeah. So all the assembly is happening in our little house. Welcome to my mess. So there's a bucket of boards that have the tops put on them and they've been programmed. They're waiting to get all the key switches and keycaps on them. All our bubble wrap that we have from protecting the boards. Yep, shows how much he's been keycares for the boards as much as us. Yeah. So here's our late night programming sessions. Yeah. Yeah, this is a very long night. So yeah, our programming stations, piles of boards ready to have their tops put on them. So one thing in here with those little spring contacts, because they're so fragile, we go immediately separate the panels, program them, get them over here, put the tops on them. Then they can go in buckets and go through the rest of the process. But until they've got that top board on them, it's really easy to break up. Yeah. Some more pictures, me programming badges. So these test jigs have actually worked really well. So we put up with some abuse. Yeah. So we've got the normal, you know, Pogo pins here and then four brass pins to locate the badges on there. So we can just shove it down on there. These over here are some little. They go in the side connectors to test those. So as you push the board down, those rotate down into place and push those connectors in. To program them, we're using these little Atmel dev boards. And we kind of hijacked the internal debug stuff. So normally it's connected between the debug chip and the main microcontroller on that board. But we needed to get that off the board. So the board has this little connector for connecting an external fancier debugger to this board, to the chip. We basically cut the lines between the chip on there and the internal debug stuff and add a little switch so I can switch it back and forth and then connect that debug connector out to our test jig to program our boards. Kind of Frankenstein did it. So I'm not the way it's meant to be used, but it works really well. And these dev boards are pretty cheap compared to production style programmers. And they do pretty good. They've they've handled the workload so far, which is really nice. Yeah. Some of our family helping. So to get our first batch out, we we called the troops in helps that he's the oldest of eight. So yeah, big families. Yeah, we spent a crazy weekend getting all the first batch of virtual badges out. You're welcome. It was nuts. A little more of the family. Yep. It was definitely not quiet. Yeah. All right. So we kind of talked about the line yards a little bit. They're really awesome and they came individually packaged. Which was awesome. Yeah, we're not expecting that. So that's amazing. Yeah, that saves us a ton of time. Yeah. They're super soft. I was I really like them. Yeah. So a little close up of the lanyard there. This was the test or sample one that they sent us before we ordered them. And for those curious, I did open it up to see what's inside. The wires are actually braided down the the lanyard, which is really nice. So it's not a flat flex cable in there that's going to break. These are more like what's in headphone wires. So just be gentle. Yeah, still durable. But no Yankee. This is what 10,000 coin cell batteries looks like. It's kind of beautiful, isn't it? Yeah. The scale of this project is ridiculous. Here's 40,000 key switches. It's just a crazy number. This was before we added on to the quantity. So now we've got 54,000 of these. There are boxes everywhere. Yep. So we alternate between these two things. Constantly. You may have seen me Yan when not meaning to, but that's where we're at at this point. Yeah, so much. So as many badge makers know, never ending project. Yeah. Who else did not sing it? Because I sing it every time I see it. Yeah, this project we're in the three months now. And it feels like it'll never end. But by the time you guys see this, it'll be done. And we'll feel more like this. Yeah. If you see us at the con like this, you know why. Don't ask why we're crying. Just be like, it's okay. Give us candy and say we're pretty. This has been a heck of a project, but it's been good and I'm excited to do it and to be done. Yeah. We hope you enjoy and thank you for letting us be your badge makers this year. Yeah. Welcome back. That looked like a lot of work, Michael. Definitely is. Well, I would like to thank MK Factor for being here and taking time out of their busy schedule to talk with us. Thank you for having us. So join us next time on Between Two Printers where we will talk about the different ways of decompressing after making a DEFCON badge. See you next time. Bye bye.