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projects > dc540 qabalah badge explorations

2023-07-21

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apologies ahead of time for how amatuerish this log may feel. i am very much a noob in just about everything, but poking random things is the best way for me to learn, so...

the badge arrived, and it is gorgeous, but i'll admit it isn't quite what i thought it was. when i first saw the listing for this badge on tindie, i thought that maybe it had some kind of internal database of qabalistic correspondences or something similar, but instead it is a fun hodgepodge of puzzles, breathing exercises, and communication functions. the demo mode that activates when the badge is first turned on is mezmerizing, but also a bit flashier than i'd anticipated (not necessarily a bad thing, i guess)

after playing with it for a little bit, i decided to try plugging it in to my laptop to check it out. of course, i somehow immediately broke the bootsel button, but after a quick google, i just connected one of the pins on the little button frame to ground with some jumper wire and the dang thing booted up just fine. the filesystem was basically empty, so i installed picotool and, after a little bit of finagling, got the following output from picotool info:

Program Information

name: MicroPython

version: v1.16-149-gafcc77ceb-dirty

features: USB REPL

thread support

frozen modules: demo, microcontroller, _boot, menu, main, nrf, file_manager, images, neo_pixel,

vagus_breathing, data, config, encryption, game, display, rp2, morse_code,

ssd1306, button_input, onewire, ds18x20, uasyncio, uasyncio/core, uasyncio/event,

uasyncio/funcs, uasyncio/lock, uasyncio/stream

given the game/puzzle aspect of this, it's not surprising that all the code is frozen. at least the names give me a clue as to how i might approach reusing the hardware. i dumped the full system image, and, separately, the program and filesystem data. running a littlefs dumper against the full image didn't give me much that was interesting. it might not be a bad idea to dig a little deeper into those dumps at some point, but for now i'm more interested in using the badge as a platform for my own silly little projects. if nothing else, the above module list gives me some clues as to how i might approach interfacing with the hardware on the badge

-- ramshackle heather

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