Show HN: I made alchemical-cosmological PCB badges

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Summary

A maker designed open-source alchemical-cosmological PCB badges for a Shenzhen hackathon, using a cheap CH32V003 MCU and WS2812B neopixels, with design files available on GitHub.

Hey guys,<p>A couple weeks ago, I was in Shenzhen, China for a hackathon and on the first day, we all used the one-day PCB fabrication to make PCB badges to wear during the event. I decided to go a little crazy and make some cool 3D alchemical-cosmological badges.<p>It&#x27;s 3 PCB&#x27;s stacked on-top of each other that&#x27;s connected using testpoints on each board. The innerboard has a 10 cent CH32V003 MCU that powers the WS2812B neopixels on the outer rings using the testpoints and shines through using exposed soldermask.<p>If you have any questions about how the design works, feel free to let me know!
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KaiPereira/Alchemical-Cosmological-Badges

Source: https://github.com/KaiPereira/Alchemical-Cosmological-Badges

Alchemical-Cosmological Badges

These are alchemical-cosmological PCB hackathon badges I designed in a day for the Fallout hackathon in Shenzhen, China. It’s 3 PCB’s stacked on-top of each other using testpoints and it’s powered by the 10 cent, CH32V003 MCU, with WS2812B neopixels.

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PCB Design

There’s 2 different PCB’s: the outer ring and the inner sun. The 2 outer rings are soldered onto the testpoints of the inner one with the second outer ring rotated 180 degree’s to look more 3D.

The rings have exposed soldermask so that the neopixels can shine through, and you actually only need to solder neopixels onto one ring to get the effect.

There’s also a battery connector on the top-left corner to attach a small battery with a voltage between 2.7V - 5V, and I’d just suggest a small LiPo, that can potentially even slot in-between the boards.

I’d also suggest putting a hole for your lanyard, because currently I just have a string wrapped around the board which looks cool, but isn’t the most convenient for assembly.

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Manufacturing

Each full badge costs about $10 at MOQ, but I’m sure you could get that down to under $3 if you create quite a few at once.

If you want to manufacture the boards, all of their production and development files are in their relative folder. I’d suggest getting the boards from JLCPCB with ENIG and a stencil for the inner board, and then buying the components from LCSC and hand soldering.

All the design files are also open-source if you want to make modifications so that they’re unique to you, so just go crazy!!

These boards were designed really fast and made to be really cheap because of a limited budget, so produce them at your own discretion.

Firmware

These boards use the CH32V003 and program over SWIO using the header pins in the middle of the board. You’ll want to program the boards using either a WCH-LinkE or PicoRVD which is what I used and what you’ll find in the firmware folder.

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