As we gradually return to a summer season of finding with each other in fields for our festivals of hackery, it’s time to glance at yet another of this year’s crop of badges. The UK’s Electromagnetic Area, or EMF, is generally a two-yearly event, but its return this 12 months will come just after a four yr absence owing to the pandemic. The EMF 2022 badge is a departure from prior outings, gone is the handheld match console sort variable and in its area is a svelte USB-C stick with a nod to the initial era of EMF badges in its wave shape.
The text is a little little on the small monitor.
On the rear is this sample.
Physically the badge is formed of two PCBs that plug alongside one another with the LiPo battery sandwiched amongst them, the higher one particular carrying the exhibit and battery while the decrease retains the ESP32-S3 MCU and the several peripherals. These incorporate a QMA7981 accelerometer, a QMC7983 magnetometer, and possibly most intriguingly, an ATECC108A cryptographic accelerator. This last part offers it the prospective to be a 2-component authentication critical, which we imagine is possibly a very first for a badge.
In use, the TFT display screen and joystick interface is usable, but tough to examine for a Hackaday scribe whose eyes maybe are not as sharp as they employed to be. Programming is by means of MicroPython, using an application structure by the identical on line hatchery system that will be acquainted to homeowners of other European badges. There are now rather a couple of applications, which we hope will support this badge have some longevity.
This is just the newest of a extended line of EMF badges, of which the 2016 model is in all probability our favorite.
