The BuggyBoy

While not the first badge I designed for DEF CON, this is the first one I ever sold. Also previous ones were tied to my name and revealing them here would doxx me. The BuggyBoy is a DTMF Encoder/Decoder with a full keypad that can make every DTMF tone. It’s nearly useless in a time like now when telephony signals are almost always out of band with voice, but I thought maybe it could be used to break elevator phones or something. Surely there is mischief to be had.

The BuggyBoy was an overcomplicated monster, designed with parts I could get off Amazon because of the parts shortage. I ended up biting off more than I could chew, and I’d like to do a redesign in the future. At its heart it’s an Arduino Mini and a MT8880CS1 that handles all the DTMF stuff. I picked that DTMF chip because I thought “hmm, what’s something that literally nobody wants? Oh, I know, a DTMF transciever!” There were like 90 in stock, I bought aroung 10, and when I went to make a second run of these they were gone. I do not think they will ever be restocked. There’s also a couple of opamps for the sound and a basic LCD screen as a display. Turns out I suck at EE and I barely got the opamps working at all, especially the one hooked up as a preamp for the microphone.

Not a whole lot to say about this one. Could definitely use some improvements. Pictured here is only half the badge, the front part with the keypad. The back part with the brains is lost, I don’t have any more of them.