Creating the most advanced event badge yet for the Biohacking Village at DEF CON

We're big fans of the creative event badges we see at DEF CON (and not just because we feature in them sometimes). This year saw a CM5-based badge for the Biohacking Village, part of the event that exists to encourage collaboration for cybersecurity safety and innovation in healthcare. Two of the village's MVPs, Nina Alli and Jennifer Agüero, told us about their collaboration with SolaSec and PamirAI, as well as the parental inspiration behind the most advanced badge they've ever worked on.

This year's badge gave wearers their own pocket-sized medical chatbot, capable of listening and providing viable feedback.

SolaSec meets PamirAI

SolaSec partnered with the Biohacking Village at DEF CON to deliver a next-generation badge that could showcase AI in the medical space. The goal was to create something local, private, and interactive - an AI experience powered entirely on the edge without any internet connection. Achieving this required more on-board processing power than a typical badge design.

To keep the badge approachable, SolaSec continued their philosophy of using widely available hardware that can be easily repaired or replicated. Having successfully used Raspberry Pi Zero in previous designs, they decided to stick with Raspberry Pi, choosing Compute Module 5 as the core of this year's badge.

This is where the collaboration with PamirAI began. Their work in local AI aligned closely with SolaSec's vision, and together they adapted Pamir's Distiller design to support Compute Module 5. PamirAI provided the baseboard and the software stack, while SolaSec handled the physical design, the 3D-printed enclosures, and the final assembly.

The result was the most powerful - not to mention the most power-hungry - badge they had ever produced. It combined accessible hardware, practical design, and cutting-edge AI to push the boundaries of what a Biohacking Village badge can be.

From cyborg skulls to homemade mead

The vision for the Biohacking Village badges is to create a piece of portable and stylised iconography. Each year's badge is designed to be bio-based and technically challenging, incorporating a 'capture the flag' game. New and upcoming technologies rooted in reusable art and science keep the badges "fresh, tactile, and overall dope".

A few examples of the Biohacking Village's most recent badges include:

• RFID readers for body implantables
• Agar plates for growing yeast (some fabulous hacker mead was had as a result)
• Open source watches (before the Apple Watch was made)
• Cyborg operation game (with haptic feedback) by Badge Pirates
• 3D-printed heart (with a heart monitor that biomimics your heartbeat) by SolaSec
• Cyborg skull with piercings and implants by Lee Wilkins
• Ambulance badge (with breathalyser) by SolaSec
• AI chatbot (with three AI models) by PamirAI and SolaSec

These badges take about a year to make from ideation to finishing touches, with ideation beginning at one DEF CON event and the final touches happening at the next. The real goal is to expose people to different biomedical influences, hopefully providing a transformative moment that inspires folks to make cool new devices that may change lives.

Touching inspiration

A couple of the most recent badges were inspired by Nina's parents. They were quite ill, and she wanted to honour them in a tangible way, sharing a piece of them with the world. Nina's dad was a paramedic captain for the Fire Department of New York, hence the ambulance badge, and her mum was a parent coordinator at the NYC Department of Education, which is where the research and reason focus comes from. Nina explained: "I am very proud of [my parents'] influence in my life, and the last two badges helped me ensure that they were immortalised in the Biohacking Village and DEF CON legacy."