What we will teach:

There is an entire world of hardware to explore.  We will make a deep-dive into the hacking of circuits available to all attendees of SAINTCON.

Analog circuits.  Through the use of pre-assembled minibadges, participants can learn how to design small circuits using analog components.  RC time constants and transistors will be featured.  The minibadges will be pre-assembled so as to lower the barrier to entry for newcomers. Station will also have a couple of oscilloscopes to show what is happening in their circuits, as well as to learn how to make pretty patterns by playing music.

Protocols.  Via the use of a couple of laptops running some open source logic analyzers, users will be able to sniff the data streams of some devices to figure out what is going on.  Featured will be SPI, I2C and new to SAINTCON this year, the commonly used vehicles, CAN buses.  Users can take their knowledge to decode data and solve challenges or alter the stream to make the device work differently.  Walkthrough to getting started would be available online, with various ‘choose your own adventure’ style jumping off points to deep dive into items of interest.

PCB/component design.  Examples of how PCBs are made and what various component types are will be displayed.