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Level 1

Read the Bits

Clip onto a chip, pull the data off it, and see what it's hiding. This page covers the gear and the technique — the puzzle itself is waiting for you at the booth.

The Board

Last year we ended up with 5x5 panels of community minibadges that didn't separate cleanly. Rather than let them go to waste, we reprogrammed the EEPROMs on them and turned them into the Level 1 challenge boards. They stay at the table — you don't take them with you.

Your job is to clip onto one of the chips, read out what's stored on it, and figure out what to do with the data you get back.

Your Minibadge

When you sign up you get a minibadge kit to keep: the board, an LED, a resistor and pin headers. Build it whenever you like. It's what you'll solder your Level 1 prize, an EEPROM chip, onto for Level 2. The minibadge build guide walks through it with photos.

Gear

We'll have this gear at the booth for you to use. If you'd rather use your own, an SOIC-8 chip clip and any CH341A-style programmer will work fine.

CH341A USB EEPROM programmer board
CH341A Programmer A small USB board that talks to the EEPROM. Generic stock photo for now — real booth photos coming soon.
SOIC chip clip with ribbon cable
SOIC Chip Clip Clips onto the chip without any soldering. Generic stock photo for now — real booth photos coming soon.

Clipping On

Chip clips are fast, but they're fiddly. A few tips to get a clean read on the first try:

  1. Find pin 1

    Look for the small dot or notch on the chip package — that marks pin 1. The clip's ribbon cable also has a striped wire (usually red) marking its own pin 1. Line the two up before you clip down.

  2. Center it over the chip body

    Squeeze the clip open and lower it straight down so all 8 legs land on the leads, not on the chip's plastic body or the board underneath. Off-center is the most common reason for a bad read.

  3. Let go gently, then check it

    Release the clip slowly and make sure it didn't shift. A leg that slipped half a pin over will usually still make contact — just with the wrong pin.

  4. Hold steady while it reads

    Once you start a read, keep the clip and cable still. A nudge mid-read is enough to glitch a bit or two.

  5. Garbage data? Recheck before you panic

    If a read comes back empty, all one repeated byte, or looks like noise, it's almost always the clip — reseat it and try again before asking a booth worker for help.

Reading It Out

We built our own reader tool that runs right in the browser over WebUSB — nothing to install, and it doesn't care what operating system you're on. Use one of the laptops at the booth (already set up), or your own if you'd rather: open the EEPROM Programmer in Chrome or Edge. Bringing your own machine? The CH341A setup page covers the one-time driver step.

Plug in your CH341A, hit Connect, hit Read. The tool will show you the raw bytes it pulled off the chip. What you do with them from there is the puzzle.

Once you've got the data, it's up to you to figure out what it means. CyberChef is the usual tool for turning encoded data into something readable. Ask a booth worker if you get stuck.