Camp 2023 – The flow3r Badge

Music brings us together. Vibrant colors captivate us. The flow3r is an electronic instrument - it turns touch and gesture into sound and light. Its illuminated edge is a mesmerizing accompaniment to its music and serves as a canvas for all manners of light effects. The badge invites you to create art and beauty together.

Programming is primarily done in MicroPython. This makes it easy to directly modify the built-in programs or create completely new ones. The surface can detect touches on all of its petals simultaneously, allowing for a wide range of interactions. The flow3r can be anything you want. You might already have some ideas.

Hardware

The heart of the flow3r is an ESP32-S3 with 8MiB of RAM and 16MiB of flash memory. With this platform, you have access to a plethora of existing software projects. It has a round color display with a resolution of 240x240 pixels, two built-in speakers, 3.5mm audio input and output ports, 40 RGB LEDs along the edges, and a USB-C connector. Inside, you’ll find a microSD card slot. As always, the electrical and mechanical design, as well as our firmware, are open source and can be edited with free software. The battery is optional this time, and its connector is compatible with the MCH2022 Badge battery. Of course, you can also just power the flow3r using something like a computer or power bank.

Cost

Thanks to generous support, we can source many expensive components at discounted prices or even get them for free. However, we still need to purchase the rest of the parts and cover the costs of assembly, transportation, packaging, and accessories. Since we do not want to make the tickets more expensive or accept monetary sponsorships, the badge is once again an optional add-on. So, if you want to have a flow3r, you can reserve it for an extra 32 euros. This price just covers our costs.

One more thing: We will have badges available for approximately half of the tickets. If you want one, make sure to reserve it!

Demo

Finally, here’s a sneak peek of our early prototypes:

Contact

You can find us on Mastodon at @flow3rbadge:chaos.social and in our Matrix channel #flow3rbadge:events.ccc.de.