Task an ESP8266 to Build an IoT Code Card Badge

Elaborate electronic badges have been popping up at conferences and trade shows for some time now. It’s a way to stand out from the crowd…

Cabe Atwell
5 years ago

Elaborate electronic badges have been popping up at conferences and trade shows for some time now. It’s a way to stand out from the crowd, and in some cases, highlighting the wearer’s engineering or maker skills ─ and a great way to land new jobs! It’s always great to see new project badges and Noel Portugal’s Oracle Code Card sticks out as a unique badge that not only identifies the wearer but used as a project platform to showcase project skills.

Portugal designed his Code Card while working as part of the Oracle Groundbreakers Team, and outfitted it with an ESP8266, an E Ink display, and a rechargeable coin-cell battery. The backside of the card features a pair of four-pin Grove System connectors, allowing you to connect sensors, cameras, or other devices depending on your project.

Besides the E Ink screen on the front of the card, it’s also populated with a pair of programmable/assignable buttons. In the case of Portugal’s design, when either button is pushed, it provides power to the microcontroller, runs code to pull content from Oracle’s Cloud service and displays it on the screen. Once the process is concluded, it then powers down (not idle), enabling the battery to last longer before needing a recharge.

Port also designed a web app that allows you configure the Code Card directly from your smartphone, which includes different templates you can assign to each button as well as how long or short each button is pressed. You can also use different icons pre-loaded on the firmware for various functions. Unfortunately, a feature that let users upload their pictures had to be scrapped, as it was found to be buggy. To see a walkthrough of Noels Code Card build, as well as links to code and other files, head over to his AppsLab page

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