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DEF CON Badge · v3

Celestial
Wayfinder

Find your people. No cell towers. No apps. No internet. Just LoRa mesh radio, GPS, and a ring of LEDs that points the way.

Reserve Yours — Pick Up at DEF CON →

// PRICE TBD  ·  PICKUP AT DEF CON  ·  LIMITED RUN

cool graphic showing two beacons communicating
How It Works

No towers. No apps.
Just radio.

01 // BROADCAST

Your location, over the air

Lock onto GPS satellites and broadcast your coordinates, username, and a status message over LoRa. Power it on and you're transmitting — no pairing, no setup.

02 // MESH

The network builds itself

Every Wayfinder in range automatically relays pings it hears to badges further out. The mesh extends your reach well beyond direct radio line-of-sight — zero configuration required.

03 // NAVIGATE

The ring points the way

A ring of LEDs acts as a live compass, rotating to point directly toward other badge holders. No map. No screen to stare at. Just look at the light and walk.

04 // SOS

One button emergency broadcast

A dedicated SOS button broadcasts a repeating distress ping every 15 seconds with your GPS coordinates until you cancel it. Every Wayfinder in range gets notified and the LED ring pulses to alert them.

V3 Hardware

Built different.
On purpose.

Every component decision is intentional. Tactile feel over production cost. Daylight readability over power savings. Field reliability over lab performance.

DISPLAY

Sharp Memory-in-Pixel

Previous versions used OLED — washed out in sunlight, prone to burn-in, rated for ~3000 hours. V3 uses a Sharp MIP display: always-on, daylight readable, and used in fitness wearables for a reason. Built to last.

INPUT

Mechanical keyboard switches

Five Cherry MX-compatible mechanical switches paired with a detented rotary encoder. Tactile feel is prioritized over production cost — you know when you've pressed a button, even in a crowd.

RADIO

915 MHz LoRa, carabiner antenna

The 915 MHz antenna mounts on a rotating carabiner clip — it stays vertical whether the badge is in your hand or hanging from your belt. Keeps the radiation pattern pointed at the ground where the other radios are.

POWER

1-hour charge. Smart shutdown.

V3 uses a buck converter charger for 2–3A charging current — down from 3 hours to ~1 hour for a full charge. A solid-state soft power switch automatically shuts the device down before the battery over-discharges.

LEDs

Compass, inputs, and flashlight

A single WS2812B strip drives everything — the LED ring doubles as compass display and scroll indicator, individual LEDs light up to confirm button presses, and 6 LEDs form a functional flashlight off the main menu.

MCU

ESP32-S3

Upgraded from ESP32 to S3 for better peripheral support, native USB, and more headroom for the FreeRTOS task architecture. The firmware runs a fully task-based system with a custom windowing UI, mesh radio stack, and MessagePack RPC layer.

Full Specs

Everything under the hood

Hardware
  • ESP32-S3 microcontroller
  • Custom 4-layer mainboard PCB
  • Sharp Memory-in-Pixel display
  • HopeRF RFM95 LoRa — 915 MHz ISM band
  • Rotating carabiner antenna mount
  • ATGM332D GPS + low-noise amplifier
  • Dedicated magnetometer + 6-axis IMU
  • 5× Cherry MX-compatible mechanical switches
  • Detented rotary encoder
  • WS2812B LED ring — compass + scroll + SOS
  • 6× LED flashlight strip
  • Piezo buzzer — new message alert
Power
  • Prismatic lithium-ion cell
  • Buck converter charger — ~1 hour full charge
  • Solid-state soft power switch
  • Auto-shutdown at low battery
  • Linear regulator with bypass for ESP32 rail
Firmware
  • FreeRTOS — fully task-based architecture
  • Custom LoRa mesh — self-healing, zero config
  • MessagePack RPC — Serial, HTTP, ESP-NOW
  • Flexible windowing UI system
  • Flash-persisted saved messages and locations
  • Open source
On the Roadmap

What's coming next

Coming Soon

Companion App

The badge is designed to be fully usable without a phone. But a companion app will make configuration, saved messages, and firmware updates far more convenient.

Coming Soon

Indoor Geolocation

GPS is great outdoors. Inside a convention hall, less so. The plan is fixed anchor nodes using ESP-NOW and RSSI-based positioning to extend tracking indoors — where you actually need it at DEF CON.

Reserve yours online.
Pick it up at DEF CON. Reserve Now → PRICE TBD  ·  LIMITED QUANTITY  ·  DEF CON PICKUP ONLY