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My badge Hack at Hackaday Superconference 2015

  November was a good time for many hackers and makers around and outside California who got to attend the Hackaday's Superconference 2015. Power-packed with technical workshops, project presentations and badge hacking , this Superconference was one of the best platforms for the best minds around the world. It was my first hardware conference in United States and I was super-excited to attend.
The most awaited event - Badge hacking started with a blast. Right side of the presentation room were full of people who were soldering and modding their badges for the badge hacking contest. I too joined the group of geeks and started my work.

What did I do?

  There were tons of free development boards, components and tools available at the table for us to use in our badge. I took a teensy LC which had a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ freescale microcontroller powerful enough to design what I had in my mind. I had an idea of making a platform independent USB game controller which can work on any Operating System.
 Armed with a teensy development board, a MMA7455 3-axis accelerometer and few buttons, I started designing my USB game controller.

How did I do?

 Three important tasks at hand were
  1. Read the MMA7455 accelerometer's values through I2C
  2. Auto threshold the initial values
  3. Emulate USB HID Keyboard 
Used I2C libraries to query the x and y-axis values from the accelerometer and set the initial values through averaging. Then, based on the tilt of the controller, the ARM controller emulates keyboard keys.- WASD or Up, Down, Left and Right arrow keys. The user buttons emulate ENTER and SPACE keys. The keys can thus be configured to control any game. I also added a pair of googly eyes with blue LEDs glued behind them which glow only when user buttons are pressed. Though I didn't win the contest, the experience left a lot of memories to cherish.

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