Still hot from the solder party, a new AND!XOR badge just landed on my desk courtesy of the hacking crew that has been living the #badgelife for the past five years. Originally based on the Futurama character Bender, the design has morphed to the point that it’s no longer recognizable as a descendant of that belligerent robot. Instead we have a skeletal midget whose face is half covered by a gear-themed mask.

At first glance, you might not even notice the character design because you’re too distracted by the beautiful composure of the hardware. This year’s badge includes a double stack-up of acrylic on top of a red circuit-board. Anyone who has used acrylic bezels in a badge design can tell you the cost for material and laser cutting time is significant. In this case the overall aesthetic of the badge is based upon the look of the mirrored gold with the art detail laser etched into the back. It’s a unique bling without even turning the power on.

When you do flip that hard switch next to three AAA batteries secured to the back of the badge, you’re greeted with RGB LEDs hidden under the etched parts of the faceplate, and both a 128×64 OLED screen and a 160×128 color LCD. The larger screen provides the menu system which is navigated via the Blackberry keyboard worn by the skeletal midget like a belt.

The Blackberry keyboard is a hot trend this year as we’ve seen the Blackberry PMOD KeyBoard that sells out every time it hits Tindie, and projects like the LoRa QWERTY Messenger sourcing them for delicious backlit user input. Why not? The original hardware was a homerun, so it makes sense the surplus replacement stock is now being embraced by hardware hackers.

If you don’t want to type everything with the edge of your thumb, the USB-C port on the bottom of the board provides terminal access. A really nice touch is that the badge also enumerates as USB mass storage, providing access to the readme file as well as a way to load new animations, images, and BASIC programs.

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Source:: Hackaday