The Hardware Hacking Village Returns Again

[l33tbunni Member Find all posts View Profile Close l33tbunni]

Hello all. Bombnav is off and doing his own thing, so I am in the hotseat now. Many of you may know me, I usually wear the green knit dragon hat around DEF CON and have basically not left the HHV since it first opened.

An official call for volunteers will be going on soon, so keep an eye out for that.

I will also like put up a CFP once I confirm some more details about the layout.

For those that are interested in where the HHV is this year, we will be in the contest area, see this thread for more information: https://forum.defcon.org/forum/defco...n-24-floorplan

As I figure things out and start making plans, I will make announcements in this thread. I would also like to make this an open suggestion thread. What would you like to see happen with the HHV in the coming years?


-bunni

[l33tbunni Member Find all posts View Profile Close l33tbunni]

Things to look out for this year:

-The spare parts table. An open pile of electronic goodness to give to and take from.
-Talks, see the CFP thread.
-Hands-on demos and training, more details in the future, see the CFP thread if you want to present something.
-Soldering, everybody loves hot molten metal alloys.

-bunni

[zohan Throws Fourier at Things Find all posts View Profile Close zohan]

Hey bunni, good to see you're taking over!
Like you, I rarely leave the HHV. I alternate between my projects and meddling in others projects.
So first and foremost: I'd like to see more kits and more variety. It always seems like we hit a wave of popularity either late Friday or early Saturday, give/sell out of everything, and then pitter our the rest of the weekend. I tried contacting Adafruit but they say they don't sponsor events. I believe last year we had a sponsorship from Sparkfun in the form of 50 kits. Do we have that this year?
On the kit front: I'd be interested in working with the Darknet crew to produce an extremely simple kit or two that we could have ready by DEFCON. I know the Darknet badges exist (Did we sell out last year?), but my interest would be something simpler and lower cost. I'm hazy on what we had on hand last year though. PM me if you'd like to talk more.

[l33tbunni Member Find all posts View Profile Close l33tbunni]

We are actually working on a very simple, low-cost kit, that doubles as a fun challenge (more details to come later, I like to keep people in waiting).

With vendors in general, we are going down a number of avenues to get more kits in people's hands, with a couple of goals in mind:
-Reduce strain on the HHV resources (read: soldering irons, HHV crew and volunteers time spent selling/handing things)
-Useful kits. I want to see more than just people coming in, learning to solder one blinky thing, and then never coming back again. Whether its a kit that can be used outside of the con, or engaging people in different ways with the kits themselves.
-Rise of the machines.

DarkNet will be returning this year. They will again have their own badge kit, also with the goal to reduce time spent at an iron and making sure kits get in the hands of people who are actually playing. The HHV is not directly affiliated with DarkNet, though announcements may show up in this subforum, see dcdark.net for further information.