To build or not to build? Well, after the first time you make an LED go blink, that isn’t even a question. Things escalate exponentially after that first hardware success. It took me 6 months from the first time I really dove into a kit from HackerBoxes.com, fumbling the entire way, to creating my first ever badge for the 10 year anniversary for my Whose Slide Is It Anyway contest at DEF CON 34.

This talk begins at the beginning, from re-learning how to solder a single pin, to staring at a KiCad screen questioning any positive thing my mother ever told people about me. I will lay bare every failure that led to every success in the goal of putting some bling around the necks of our contestants.

Ultimately, this is a talk about community. No amount of Google searches, no stack of datasheets, nor any number of AI prompts can match the criticality of being able to lean on a community of makers all hell bent on conquering code and electricity. To get from prototype to PCB, it truly takes a hardware village.