WORKSHOPS
Any materials needed to participate in certain workshops will be available at-cost. In all cases, observers are welcome. For specific details, visit https://wiki.hope.net.
Book Binding
Annika Santhanam
Learn how to design and create your own book from start to finish. Explore different binding techniques, paper selection and preparation, cover design and materials, basic bookbinding tools and their uses, and most importantly take part in a discussion of archival materials, documentation, and preservation.
Part 1: Sunday 1100-1300 - Workshop C / Tobin 223
Part 2: Sunday 1400-1500 - Workshop C / Tobin 223
Build Your Own Meshtastic Node: Off-Grid, Encrypted LoRa Meshnets for Everyone!
Kody Kinzie
Beginners can now create off-grid, encrypted mesh networks for cheap, with applications in emergency communication, sensor monitoring, and more. These mesh networks have been popping up in cities all over the world, and this class will go over everything a beginner needs to run or build their own nodes. If you've ever wanted to legally create off-grid, encrypted mesh networks that can span over a hundred miles, you can get started with building Meshtastic nodes! This workshop will serve as a beginner user's guide to Meshtastic, covering everything from hardware building to software configuration and modules. You will create custom Meshtastic nodes, set them up to transmit, and explore the built-in modules and how they work. Attendees will learn to solder their own Nibble Meshtastic nodes, select antenna options, configure software, and deploy their own weather-sensor nodes.
Saturday 1200-1400 - Script Kitty Village
Cat-Shaped Wi-Fi Defender: Hands-on Hacker Hunting With Microcontrollers
Kody Kinzie
Want to become a Wi-Fi investigator? You can uncover hidden cameras, network intruders, and more with the Wi-Fi Nugget! In this workshop you'll use a cute, cat-shaped microcontroller board to catch hackers using common Wi-Fi hacking tools like a Wi-Fi Pineapple, hunt down suspicious Wi-Fi devices like hidden cameras, and detect jamming attacks. Attendees will explore how low-cost microcontrollers can be used to unmask and track down Wi-Fi hacking tools, or locate unwanted devices intruding on your local network.
Sunday 1500-1700 - Script Kitty Village
Check Your Stuff: A Drug Checking Workshop
Jared Skolnick, Adam Cook
Learn how to use reagent testing on various substances in order to use these substances more safely. This workshop will not include the testing of any illicit drugs, but will use household items like aspirin, sugar, and baking powder, to teach how to test. Attendees will also receive take home information on how to test on their own, and discounted pricing on test kits. By completing this workshop, you will have all the tools and knowledge needed to test your substances at home and consume them more safely.
Friday 1430-1530 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Claw Back Your Data From Big Tech (Today) With Cyd
Micah Lee, redshiftzero
The Lockdown Systems Collective will be holding a hands-on workshop about Cyd, the open source app that helps you claw back your data from big tech companies. This workshop will walk you through the following: installing Cyd, saving your data from X and/or Facebook, deleting what you want from those platforms, and migrating your data to Bluesky/Mastodon. If there's interest, this workshop will also cover getting started with Cyd development environment, discussion about how Cyd's black magic works, and discussion about the worker-owned Lockdown Systems Collective.
Friday 1900-2000 - Workshop C / Tobin 223
Creative Problem-Solving
Gregory Carpenter
This workshop immerses participants into using both familiar and unfamiliar creative methodologies, problem-solving techniques, and the application of diverse tool sets. This comprehensive program spans from understanding the fundamentals of creativity to the practical utilization of creative tool kits for generating and focusing options in problem-solving scenarios. By the end of the day, participants will be equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary for creative problem-solving, fostering an innovative mindset, and providing practical tools for addressing challenges in real-world scenarios. The workshop is designed to engage participants through structured problem-solving activities, allowing them to apply various techniques in hands-on labs. It will begin with an introduction to a range of problem-solving strategies, including idea-generation and focusing tools, among others. These techniques will help participants approach challenges systematically and creatively. The workshop will be divided into groups by the facilitator, with each group tackling different labs. As participants work through the labs, they will practice and apply the tools and techniques introduced earlier. The facilitator will guide the groups, providing support and facilitating discussion to ensure participants are effectively using the problem-solving methods. This collaborative and interactive format encourages active learning and helps participants refine their problem-solving skills in a real-world context.
Friday 1200-1400 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Designing and Building a Watch Face for an E-ink Watch
Wailun
This workshop walks through the steps in designing and building a watch face for Watchy - an open source E-ink watch. Learn about the software libraries and tools used, design considerations, and caveats of working with E-ink displays. If you're interested in E-ink technology and have always wanted to learn more to build your own project, check out this workshop! The Watchy hardware will be provided for you to keep.
Saturday 1100-1200 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Digital Music Synthesis/Solder Workshop With ArduTouch Synth Kit
Mitch Altman
Learn to solder together a way cool, powerful music synthesizer - and learn how to make cool music, sound, and noise with a computer chip! For total beginners. Participants will learn to solder well for life, learn the basics of digital signal processing, and bring home a working performing music synthesizer that is Arduino compatible, open-source, and has a touch-keyboard and a built-in speaker/amp.
Saturday 1900-2130 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
Dread Hacks
Annika Santhanam
This workshop will turn existential dread into mischief with hardware and software tools. Issues will be talked about, often linked to tech advancement that makes us depressed about the future. Prototypes will be created for simple art projects (electronic or not) that comment on these issues. Old hardware will be repurposed into creative tools, prototypes built that make us laugh, and you will hopefully collaborate with people who share your dread to blend technical skills with artistic expression.
Saturday 2000-2300 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Engineering Bias in Facial Recognition: Workshop and Safe Experimental Space
Craig Fahner, Evan Light
This workshop will demonstrate the facial recognition visualizer, which extracts live inferences from images of the face, including estimated age, gender, emotional expression, and more. The existing facial recognition visualizer software will be expanded with a prompt engineering component, in which the participant can develop a prompt that makes further assessments based on the appearance of an individual. During the workshops, participants will be invited to try out this software to experiment with different prompts. This workshop will reveal how readily AI and machine learning systems can be trained to make absolute determinations based on input data, even when those determinations are based on biased, incomplete assumptions. Given that any video-based surveillance system can be expanded to make these kinds of inferences, this workshop intends to give participants firsthand knowledge of how effortlessly biased determinations can be made based on facial surveillance data - and how risky these determinations actually are.
Friday 1530-1730 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
Evaluating a Program's Free Software Licensing
Craig Topham
This workshop involves walking participants through an evaluation process of a computer program's licensing in order to determine if it is free software or not. This is not a master class on evaluating licenses for a mega-corporation, nor is it legal advice, and is not designed for lawyers. This is a grass roots level computer program evaluation process to determine if a program is licensed adequately to be called free software. Along the way, a reviewer may discover licensing issues or proprietary code files. They would then be in a position for sending suggestions to the project in order to resolve potential problems.
Saturday 1800-1930 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Getting Started With ESPHome: From Zero to Cool
Vinicius Fortuna
This hands-on workshop introduces participants to ESPHome, an open-source platform for integrating ESP32 microcontrollers with home automation systems. Participants will learn the fundamentals of configuring ESPHome YAML files to control inputs and outputs, connect to Wi-Fi, enable remote access, perform over-the-air (OTA) updates, integrate with Home Assistant, and add external sensors or components. Attendees will walk away with the knowledge to create their own simple IoT solutions using ESPHome. No programming or soldering skills are required, making this workshop highly accessible to beginners and anyone curious about home automation.
Saturday 1700-1830 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
Get Your Amateur (Ham) Radio License in a Single Day
Nicole Adams, Dan Romanchik, Ed Wilson
This workshop will teach attendees what they need to know to pass the Technician class amateur radio license exam and get started in amateur radio. It includes six hours of instruction, with the exam administered immediately after the workshop.
It is sometimes said that radio amateurs were the original hackers, cobbling together transmitters and receivers from odds, ends, and discarded electronics. Radio amateurs continue this tradition today, and in addition to building their own gear, they're hacking on digital communications systems, including both hardware and software. Amateur radio is a great hobby for electronics enthusiasts and, increasingly, for hardware and software hackers.
Participants will increase their chances of passing the test if they download the study guide from www.kb6nu.com/study-guides/ and familiarize themselves with the material before coming to the workshop. The text for this workshop is Dan's No Nonsense Technician Class License Study Guide. The PDF version of the study guide is available for free at the above page. EPUB and print versions are also available for a small charge.
Saturday 1100-1900 - Workshop C / Tobin 223
Hacker Public Radio - Why You Should Listen and Contribute
Murph
Hacker Public Radio (hackerpublicradio.org) is a community podcast that run five days a week. It is dedicated to sharing knowledge and has been running in various forms for nearly 20 years. Anyone who has anything that is of interest to hackers is welcome to submit a show. Some of the topics/skills that will be covered are: listening, participating, recording.
Saturday 1500-1700 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Hacking Network APIs
Dan Nagle
A foundational component of communication between devices is the TCP/IP network stack. Web browsing, streaming video, secure control, and innumerable other applications are built upon this technology. This three-part demonstration will use open source tools to focus on the data transfer components UDP and TCP while targeting an IoT device. Part One is reverse engineering the network commands to better understand them and then mimic it (a common attack strategy). Network protocols will be discussed during this process. Armed with our new knowledge and skills, Part Two will take them a step further to discover and analyze malware present on the IoT device. Part Three will cover fundamentals of network latency versus network throughput by forced network degradation. This presentation is light on slides and heavy on demos.
Saturday 1230-1430 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
How to Make Herbal Medicinal Teas to Support Heath and Wellbeing
Meredith
Make and drink tea from different herbs, learn about these herbs from an organoleptic and phytochemical perspective, and discuss different ways to prepare herbal remedies. Introduce herbal allies for nervous system regulation, stress, and sleep - especially for tech and digital workers. There will be a tea tasting with basics ingredients. Making tinctures, flower essences, and/or essential oils may be touched upon.
Sunday 1100-1200 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Interviewing for the Sake of History and Memory
Jason Scott
Among the most important yet difficult aspects of preserving history is to acquire the stories and memories of people who played a part in it. Whether for an edited piece, produced professionally, or just to get the record straight before recollection and individuals are gone, interviews are the critical building block. This workshop gives a context and foundation for being able to conduct interviews that will hold interest and inform later generations. Process, preparation, and follow through will be covered, as well as a number of examples from the audience.
Friday 2000-2200 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Intro to Mathematics of Signal Processing
Kevin Baragona
The mathematics behind signal processing is beautiful, useful, and approachable with a pre-calculus level of math. This workshop will go over a wide variety of useful signal processing topics that will surely be useful in your hacking journey! Fundamental mathematical tools will be explored, with an emphasis on visual demonstrations such as Fourier analysis (DFT and FFT), convolution, and linear systems.
Sunday 1400-1500 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
Learn Bad USB Hacking With the Bluetooth Nugget
Kody Kinzie
In this workshop you'll learn to write bad USB scripts to automate computer hacking using a cute, cat-themed hacking tool called the Nugget. You'll learn to write scripts to get computers of any operating system to do your bidding in seconds, and how to automate nearly any desired action remotely through its Wi-Fi interface. If you're looking for an introduction to simple scripting that's a little more spicy, this class is for you!
Sunday 1200-1400 - Script Kitty Village
Learn Beginner Soldering With the Meow Mixer Badge
Michael Raymond
Want to learn how to solder? Learn about circuits and soldering while creating your own interactive, color-tuning cat badge with the Meow Mixer! In this class, you'll solder together a light-up, cat-themed badge that teaches a simple RGB tuning circuit. By turning the red, green, or blue knob, you can adjust the color of the cat's eyes. Perfect for beginners and soldering experts wanting to make a fun and cute badge.
Friday 1300-1500 - Script Kitty Village
Learn to Solder With "I Can Solder" Badge Kit
Mitch Altman
Anyone can learn to solder! It is useful and fun. This workshop is for kids of all ages (and anyone of any age). Learn to solder by making a cool badge that you can wear and blink wherever you go. The "I Can Solder!" badge kit is a very simple open hardware kit that anyone can use for learning to solder. There will also be a fun overview of how it works. This workshop is for total newbies to learn to solder.
Saturday 1530-1630 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
LED Strips Everywhere for Everyone!
Mitch Altman
Learn how to light up LED strips with a cheap Arduino and make your life trippy and beautiful! For total beginners - no knowledge needed at all. LED strips have become really inexpensive. And many people have created easy methods of controlling the color and brightness of individual LEDs in LED strips. This workshop will show you one easy and fun way to control LED strips, and to make them do what you want. You'll learn everything you need to know to use existing Arduino programs - and how to hack Arduino programs - to control the colors in your world with LED strips.
Sunday 1200-1330 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
A Little Boost: Making Your Guitar Sing With One Knob
Joe Vella
In this workshop, you will be building a JFET-based clean boost using a J201 transistor. This circuit amplifies your guitar signal without changing its tone too much - just more of your sound, louder and richer. You'll bias the JFET transistor so it sits in its sweet spot - ready to take your guitar's signal and gently boost it. A few capacitors clean up the power and remove unwanted DC. The potentiometer controls the output level, so you can go from a subtle push to a strong lead boost with just one knob. By the end of this build, you'll not only have a killer boost circuit - you'll also understand how and why it works. So come by and bring your tone to life!
Saturday 1130-1230 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
Lockpick Village With Lockpick Extreme
Bob Hermes, Christine Bachman, Daniel Finegold
Locks are puzzles you can solve without the key! Explore the fun world of locksport with Lockpick Extreme. Learn to lockpick from friendly instructors or practice what you already know with their assortment of locks and picks. When you're done, you can shop at their pop-up shop and take your new hobby home with you.
Ongoing every day at Lockpick Village
Make Your Very Own IoT Cat Lamp With WLED!
Kody Kinzie
Want to create a beautiful, Wi-Fi controllable LED cat lamp? In this workshop, you'll put together a "Purrsheen" cat shaped Wi-Fi lamp that allows you to control your adorable cat baby via Home Assistant with WLED. This workshop teaches about rapid prototyping and open-source, Internet-controlled LED art.
Friday 1100-1200 - Script Kitty Village
Meshtastic for Hackers: Set Up, Configure, and Deploy Nodes for Advanced Applications
Kody Kinzie
Meshtastic is a long range, encrypted, off-grid mesh protocol that features many powerful modules, configurations, and settings. For beginners just getting started, it can be confusing to dive into these features. In this workshop, you'll explore the exciting modules that make Meshtastic more fun and useful. You'll learn how to customize the encryption, add hardware like GPS and sensors, and change the default transmission settings to adapt to specific environments. Attendees will learn to customize their Meshtastic nodes for any situation using the built-in modules and settings. You'll also learn about attacks against Meshtastic, and how to get involved in your local area!
Saturday 1800-2000 - Script Kitty Village
Practical and Continuous Security Engineering (Starting a Security Program for Free)
Mark El-Khoury, Omar
This workshop is a hands-on exercise in building a good security program. The presenters have built security programs from scratch at multiple companies and have found that, while the companies can vary, the fundamentals remain roughly the same. The goal here is to bridge the gap between common infosec vendor jargon and practical security engineering work. There's no shortage of acronyms being invented every week in the realm of security engineering. Instead of wading through these buzzwords that might not even be around by the end of the year, this workshop will dig into the principles that make for a good security program. These principles will then be applied with practical hands-on exercises where you'll use free and open source security tools to build continuous security automation and alerting similar to ones that have been built when starting new security programs.
Friday 1600-1900 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Realtime Audio Processing With a Laptop Using LiCoRICE
Sabar Dasgupta
LiCoRICE (Linux Comodular Realtime Interactive Computation Engine) is an open-source, model-based design software tool for running (soft) realtime applications. It was developed for systems neuroscience research to collect, process, and output neuroelectrophysiology data with empirically guaranteed millisecond timings. Given its general purpose nature, LiCoRICE can also be used to process audio in realtime, control lighting elements, or for robotics applications. In this workshop, participants will learn about realtime basics; how to install LiCoRICE; and will run a realtime application that records, modifies, and outputs an audio stream in realtime.
Friday 1530-1830 - Workshop C / Tobin 223
Red vs. Blue: Malware - Build It, Break It, Block It
Scott Cook
Unleash your inner hacker and defender in this hands-on workshop! Dive into the dark art of crafting Windows and Linux rootkits, then switch gears to learn malware analysis and reverse engineering of those rootkits. This workshop will go from static analysis with tools like Binary Ninja and DetectItEasy to dynamic analysis decrypting payloads and extracting critical IoCs. It doesn't stop there - you'll build detection rules with tools like YARA, ClamAV, OSQuery, OSSEC, OpenEDR, and Snort signatures to hunt down those rootkits. Cap it off by integrating your defenses into Elasticsearch and Kibana dashboard. Perfect for aspiring red and blue teamers to learn over a dozen different open-source tools.
Saturday 1930-2330 - Workshop C / Tobin 223
rim: Design SD-Core Jewelry and Wear Your Visualized Signal Message History
Dana Gretton, Jaguar Kristeller
Ever wondered what your message history reveals about your communication patterns? This workshop teaches you to extract and visualize your own Signal message history using open-source tools, keeping your data entirely on your local machine while exploring patterns like messaging frequency, vocabulary usage, and communication habits. You'll also practice democratic design to explore techniques for message history analysis, wearable self-data collection concepts, and definitions of SD-core. With various chains, clips, and jewelry-making supplies available, the presenters will help you store your visualized message history self-data on a micro-SD card that you can craft into a piece of jewelry! Bring your own micro-SD or purchase one from the workshop at cost. You can subvert the extractive data economy and flaunt your independence from the Data Giants one fashionable piece at a time.
Saturday 1300-1500 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
Solder Your Own Cat-Themed Wi-Fi Hacking Tool
Felix Orozco
Test out your through-hole and surface mount soldering skills to create your own open-source, cat-themed hacking tool. In this workshop, you'll create a microcontroller-powered hacking tool that allows students to perform bad USB attacks, Wi-Fi attacks, control hardware with CircuitPython, and more!
Friday 1600-1800 - Script Kitty Village
Synth Meetup
Mitch Altman
This is an invitation to get together and geek out over music synthesizers, music synthesis, making sound, and creating music. Hardware, software - anything goes! All are welcome to come and talk synths, play synths, share projects, learn, and share. Some attendees have made their own synths at workshops at HOPE_16 - please bring them! Please feel free to bring any synth or sound-making device. Everyone welcome - no need to bring anything but your interest in music, sound, and noise!
Saturday 2200-2400 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
Violent Python
Sam Bowne, Elizabeth Biddlecome
Even if you have never programmed before, you can quickly and easily learn how to make custom hacking tools in Python. The presenters build tools that perform port scanning, brute-force attacks, crack password hashes, and attack various encryption methods including one-time pads. Python is very popular for good reason: it's the easiest language to use for general purposes. This workshop is structured as a CTF (Capture The Flag), so each participant can proceed at their own pace. The techniques will be briefly demonstrated, and tips and help will be provided as needed to make sure everyone is able to solve at least some of the challenges. All materials are freely available and will remain so after the workshop.
Friday 1800-2200 - Workshop A / Tobin 219
Voice-Activated Terminal and OpenSaysMe: Privacy-Centric Tools for the Future
Marcia Wilbur
This hands-on workshop introduces attendees to OpenSaysMe, a voice-activated terminal launcher using offline AI models, and PrivacySafe Chat, a secure chat application leveraging 3NWeb protocols. Participants will learn to set up voice recognition tools, launch terminal commands via voice, and explore secure, metadata-minimizing communication through PrivacySafe Chat over 3NWeb's federated approach. By the end, participants will have functional, privacy-first applications on their devices.
Sunday 1230-1430 - Workshop B / Tobin 221
Wi-Fi Hacking Self-Defense for Beginners
Kody Kinzie
This workshop offers hands-on instruction using a unique, cat-shaped Wi-Fi hacking microcontroller, the Wi-Fi Nugget. Designed to engage participants in practical learning, essential skills for defending against four common, yet powerful Wi-Fi attacks will be covered. Participants will explore topics like detecting Wi-Fi leaks, the risks of QR codes leading to hidden networks, spotting phishing networks, and defending against advanced Wi-Fi karma attacks. The Wi-Fi Nugget is a powerful tool for understanding and fighting back against Wi-Fi hacking. This workshop is suitable for Wi-Fi hacking experts and those just getting started.
Saturday 1500-1700 - Script Kitty Village
Wireguard Three Ways: Cooking Up Security in a Surveillance State
Michael Taggart
It's never been clearer that we need to hold our communications technology at arm's length. The rise of authoritarianism, the fall of due process, and the ubiquity of data sniffing mechanisms poses a threat to anyone and everyone, even if they have "nothing to hide." In such an environment, taking steps to secure your communications and digital activity is basic self-defense. But the conventional advice - "use a VPN" - isn't gonna cut it. Especially if you are building a community of any sort that needs to share information, you require a more self-managed networking solution. That's where Wireguard comes in. Wireguard, a newer VPN technology, allows the creation of point-to-point VPNs that are wholly owned by the network participants. When used correctly, Wireguard networks make traffic between trusted hosts unobservable to prying eyes. This workshop will explore three "recipes" for Wireguard networking to fit various threat models. Wireguard basic concepts will be reviewed, you'll learn how to configure it quickly for desktop and mobile devices, and you'll find out when to apply each Wireguard recipe. Each network type will be created by the participants! This workshop takes no shortcuts. Wireguard and a minimum of additional tools will be used to get networks set up, since each additional dependency adds to the risk profile. Attendees will leave with an understanding of Wireguard networks, and be prepared to create one for themselves and their communities.
Friday 1200-1500 - Workshop C / Tobin 223
