SAO Demo Controller

If you’ve even just skirted the periphery of badge life culture, you’ll know of SAO, or Simple Add Ons. They are small boards that add some decorative or functional features to many conference badges with a compatible SAO 6-pin connector. The six pins are a 3.3V supply and ground, a pair of GPIO and an I2C bus. If you are working on a SAO that uses more than just the power pins it can be cumbersome to have to use a conference badge for testing and development. The SAO Demo Controller solves this with a small standalone RP2040-based SAO development board.

Supplied in kit form, the included RP2040- Zero is hooked up to a custom PCB and there are two SAO connectors oriented at 90 degrees to each other. This is a simple but fantastic feature that accommodates a wide variety of SAO form factors. There is also a pair of qwiic/STEMMA QT sockets on board making it trivial to add further I2C devices for experimentation and development.

All the pins of the RP2040-Zero are broken out and the unit is powered via the USB C connector. On board the RP2040-Zero there is an RGB LED visible which can be utilised as a power indicator or for other feedback. It’s a perfect device for SAO development if you aren’t lucky enough to have a SAO equipped conference badge, but it also could be handy when doing simple demonstrations or for simply showing off your SAO collection. Bring one of these along to Supercon in case someone has trouble with their SAO at the last minute!