> The WHY2025 badge was designed to be powered by 2 Li-Ion 18650 battery cells connected in parallel. The cells provided to visitors are of the "unprotected" kind
...I am going to put on my "client-facing consultant" hat for a moment, which means skipping the expletives, and just say that not only is this a Very Bad Design, it is such a Very Bad Design that someone should really have noticed this and not let it happen.
Because this really is a Startlingly Bad Idea.
An earlier design by Badge.Team [1] did not use these cells and Badge.Team (no longer associated with WHY2025) strongly advised against the use of these cells.
The earlier design has been matured into Konsool [2] and is available as Tanmatsu [3].
[1] https://badge.team/
[2] https://badge.team/docs/badges/konsool/
[3] https://nicolaielectronics.nl/tanmatsu/
Why was that advice ignored?
WHY2025 orga has been a shitshow on the social & interpersonal level. The badge team was one of the casualties. (And triggers, from what I've heard they weren't paragons either, but that's even more hearsay.)
(Source: I'm in c3noc/Internetmanufaktur, though not attending WHY. TBH I saw the shitshow coming and decided I don't need it in my life.)
"WHY2025 orga has been a shitshow on the social & interpersonal level."
Curious to learn more as an outsider if you don't mind elaborating?
Often it is the case that safety concerns are overruled by less technical savvy managers for some lesser critical reason.
But surely two 18650s are just overkill. I might understand switching from the recommended LiPo cell to a single 18650 for cost cutting reasons (even though that's still probably a bad idea safety-wise), but why two?!
I have a smartphone prototype board right next to me which can be powered entirely from a single (protected!) 18650 cell, and let me tell you that its SoC isn't exactly power efficient. It really seems baffling.
I have a bunch of camp badges there too and while some are really fun boards to play with I wouldn't trade safety for longer battery life with any of them.
Hah I also have a smartphone prototype here powered by a single 18650 and I've already seen one of them turn into a smoke machine because the holder has protruding pins and doesn't fit most protected cells...
Two 18650s also sounds like it would be heavy for a badge
A single (removable) 2000mAh lipo cell, on the low end of capacity for 18650s these days, was a very common power source for smartphones in the 2010s.