Adventures into Badger2040 hacking

tl;dr

So I had seen the Badger240 and hadn’t played around with e-ink screens or the pi pico really so I ordered one to force me to get my hands dirty. I knew I had some real potential for a really cool wearable and lots of hacking potential. Join me below to see what I added to my unit.

Hardware

TP4056 USB C
Latching push button
lipo battery 300mAh
M2.5 5mm bolts x4
Female 2.54mm headers x10

Charging

The first thing I knew I had to add USB C charging to the badger, I found it a bit weird that you could power it from a lipo battery but it had no charging circuity. I took a USB C TP4056 and double stick tapped it to the back of the badger so the port was flush with the top of the badger board.

I also added a latching switch so it could be turned off completely in my bag, It does a really good job of sleeping when not in use but I wanted the option. You can also see in the photo that I removed the lipo battery connector to free up some space and just soldered the battery straight to the port. I like the fact that they left most of the back of the board empty so you could stick things to the back without anything getting in the way.

Headers

I also had to soldered female 2.54mm pitch headers to the pinout because I wanted to add some hardware to the badge. I could have used the Qw/ST (Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connectors but its cheaper and easier to just stick with the 2.54mm pitch headers.

Case

Since I had stuck the tp4056 board to the back of the badger I wanted to add a recess for it to keep it in place and stop it moving around, I also added some light pips for the 2 charging LED’s. I designed in a recess for the on/off switch. Since I wanted to use 2.54mm pitch female headers I also added some support for them. I designed a 3d printed end cap to go around the shell and hold which ever add-on you wanted to put on.

Magnets

I also came up with the idea to add a few magnets into the case so you can stick it to your fridge or toolbox.

Custom apps and add-on’s

I was looking around trying to find if anyone had made a custom app for their badger2040 boards and came across this amazing resource, instead of adding apps to my badger I wanted to replace the un-used apps. The first one I thought I would replace was the “help” app since I no longer needed it once you learn how to navigate the badgerOS.

https://www.thoughtasylum.com/2022/05/01/the-badger-2040-custom-badges/

Its quite a basic app that a wrote but its all I was looking for. I found a library for the bmp280 temp and pressure sensor that I had in my parts bin. I also need the i2c library because that’s what the BMP280 spoke. I had a curiosity with what the current temp was in my work place both when it was really hot in the summer of 2022 and when we had the cold snap in December that same year. I also got to do some testing of extreme temperature with the cold snap where I recorded a -3.6 degrees C. The e ink screen really didn’t like this and was hard for it to refresh its self, This also could be to do with the lipo being cold too.