Rocket SAO V1.1

While the name “SAO” might generate lots of heated discussion about what it should stand for (Simple Add On, SuperCon Add On, or its earlier more unmentionable name) the premise of what they are is straightforward. These little SAO doohickeys are small circuits that can be added on to SAO-compatible badges, with many hacker/geek/maker conferences badges being SAO compliant, featuring the standard SAO 6-pin header on board. These revamped Rocket SAO are a beautiful example of a fabulous badge adornment using diffused reverse mount NeoPixel addressable RGB LEDs to light and animate parts of the design.

The lovingly crafted PCBs are now available in red, blue or purple solder masks and each one features 3 NeoPixel mounted on the reverse. Aside from the SAO 6-pin connector, there is an ATtiny 412 microcontroller on board with one of the 6-pin connectors used as a UPDI pin to make it easy to program. If you haven’t used the slightly newer ATtiny412 before there are plenty of excellent tutorials online and it’s very similar to using the older ATtiny85 variants, plus they are compatible with the Arduino IDE.

While we can appreciate how good these would look attached to a nice conference badge SAO connector, we love that these also have fittings to attach to a small lanyard or key ring and we think they would look lovely connected as a series of rockets in flight!