---
title: "How we made the Supabase Select 2026 badge"
description: "Supabase gave every Select 2026 attendee a programmable badge based on the Pimoroni Tufty 2350, with an RP2350 microcontroller, color screen, rechargeable battery, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and five buttons. A firmware bug drained all batteries during shipping, requiring bulk charging with 30-port USB hubs in 14 batches over 56 hours and individual firmware updates. The venue Wi-Fi failed, so the schedule was synced via a hotspot, two badges at a time, one minute each, totaling seven hours. Attendees have since repurposed the badge into projects including a live flight tracker, an arcade game about database vacuuming, a food finder app, a music note collection game, and a tiny on-device language model. The post provides resources for hacking the badge: a first-app guide, a Claude Code project kit, a virtual badge, guides for C or Rust firmware, and a contest with Supabase credits and conference passes."
---

# How we made the Supabase Select 2026 badge

[Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase) · sam\_meech\_ward · Oct 14, 2026

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

Supabase gave every Select 2026 attendee a programmable badge based on the Pimoroni Tufty 2350, with an RP2350 microcontroller, color screen, rechargeable battery, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and five buttons. A firmware bug drained all batteries during shipping, requiring bulk charging with 30-port USB hubs in 14 batches over 56 hours and individual firmware updates. The venue Wi-Fi failed, so the schedule was synced via a hotspot, two badges at a time, one minute each, totaling seven hours. Attendees have since repurposed the badge into projects including a live flight tracker, an arcade game about database vacuuming, a food finder app, a music note collection game, and a tiny on-device language model. The post provides resources for hacking the badge: a first-app guide, a Claude Code project kit, a virtual badge, guides for C or Rust firmware, and a contest with Supabase credits and conference passes.

## Context

Supabase gave every attendee of its Select 2026 conference a programmable badge based on the Pimoroni Tufty 2350. The post describes the hardware, the challenges of preparing 800 badges (battery drain, Wi-Fi failure), the offline-first design, community projects built after the conference, and resources for hacking the badge.

## Approach / What changed

Supabase chose the Pimoroni Tufty 2350 single-board design to avoid hand-assembling modular components for 800 badges. They wrote the onboard software (name tag, schedule, games) and handled logistics: a firmware bug required bulk charging with 30-port USB hubs and individual firmware updates, and when the venue Wi-Fi failed, they synced the schedule via a hotspot, two badges at a time, taking about a minute each. After the conference, they published a first-app guide, a Claude Code project kit, a virtual badge, and guides for replacing the firmware with C or Rust.

## Takeaways

- The badge is based on the Pimoroni Tufty 2350 with an RP2350 microcontroller, color screen, rechargeable battery, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and five buttons.
- A firmware bug drained all batteries during shipping, requiring bulk charging with 30-port USB hubs and individual firmware updates.
- The badge can be programmed using the first-app guide, Claude Code project kit, or by replacing the firmware to work in C or Rust.

## FAQ

### What hardware is inside the Supabase Select badge?

The badge is based on the Pimoroni Tufty 2350 and includes an RP2350 microcontroller, a color screen, a rechargeable battery, onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and five physical buttons.

### How did you charge and update 800 badges?

A firmware bug drained all batteries during shipping. They used 30-port USB hubs to charge 60 badges at a time in 14 batches over 56 hours, and each badge required an individual firmware update via USB to fix the drain.

### What can I build with the badge?

You can build apps like a clock, pomodoro timer, or a display that reads from your Supabase project. Attendees have built a flight tracker, arcade games, and a tiny language model. The post provides a first-app guide and a Claude Code project kit.

**Tags:** [Community](https://yomu.fyi/topic/community), [Game Development](https://yomu.fyi/topic/game-development), [Hardware](https://yomu.fyi/topic/hardware), [Raspberry Pi](https://yomu.fyi/topic/raspberry-pi), [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/topic/supabase)

- Source: [Supabase](https://supabase.com/blog/how-we-made-the-supabase-select-2026-badge)
- Source URL: https://supabase.com/blog/how-we-made-the-supabase-select-2026-badge
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-10-15T00:00:22.787Z

[Read original post](https://supabase.com/blog/how-we-made-the-supabase-select-2026-badge)