BadgerHack was a marketing campaign designed to give event goers a uniquely SparkFun experience upon visiting a booth at SXSW Create (part of SXSW 2015). Visitors were given a kit of parts that needed to be soldered together at SparkFun’s booth. The kit ultimately created a badge complete with microcontroller (based on Arduino) and LED matrix. The visitors could then visit one of two “programming stations” where they could configure their badges to scroll their names (or other messages), static images, and animations. The badges could be taken home and reprogrammed or combined with other electronics to make any number projects based on SparkFun’s tutorials.
The campaign resulted in subsequent follow-on projects and media attention. Hackaday wrote a glowing post about the badge experience. Add-on kits were introduced, including a gaming kit, a plant-monitoring sensor kit, and a synthesizer kit. People were thrilled to show off their self-assembled badges on Twitter. The success of BadgerHack resulted in two new products at SparkFun: the RedStick and the LED array. The following year, SparkFun ran a contest to see who could create the most compelling projects with their BadgerHack-inspired boards. The recap video from SXSW 2015 can be seen below.