Build with Us
Going Digital. Neo
2023
Going Digital
44 Proto-PDNs in field · Quickdraw duels · Breakout-board build
The first microcontroller PDN: Arduino Pro Mini breakouts, Amazon-sourced parts, and thousands of hand-soldered joints before Neo. We introduced Quickdraw: jack in, countdown, Go, first button press wins. Rules that lived on paper in 2022 moved into firmware.
Tech: Arduino Pro Mini, 3.5 mm serial between nodes, first Alleycat firmware
By the Numbers
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Proto-PDNs in field | 44 |
| Hunter devices | 22 |
| Bounty devices | 22 |
| Roles | Separate hardware per role |
These 44 units were entirely retired after 2023; none returned to the field in later years.
What Changed (and Why)
Two devices, two roles. Hunters and Bounties got physically different units with fixed serial wiring on the 3.5 mm jack. TX and RX were pinned so a node could only talk one way. Quickdraw was reliable in the moment, but you could not flash a Hunter unit into a Bounty unit or add new roles without a new hardware generation.
Proto-PDN form factor. The team nicknamed this generation The Shoe: a compact printed enclosure that gave every player something tactile to carry, not just Bounties.
Intake film v1. Video replaced verbal booth briefings as the canonical rules pass. Same information for everyone, every time. We have refined that pattern every year since.
What We Learned
One device per role does not scale. Splitting Hunter and Bounty into separate SKUs doubled assembly, doubled spare-parts headaches, and locked us out of flexible game design. Rollout notes for 2024 were explicit: make a universal design.
A new device every year is too hard to build on. Proto-PDN was a successful experiment and a dead end architecturally. We needed a platform we could extend, not a one-off we would throw away after April.
Digital rules beat paperwork. Automatic countdown and winner detection removed staff as referees for every duel. The cost was manufacturing complexity and firmware written from scratch on commodity breakout hardware.
Quickdraw is the core loop. Everything since 2023 (screens, wireless, multiplayer modes, FDN puzzles) stacks on two PDNs connected, one fair reaction-time contest, back to the LARP.
Proto-PDN bill of materials
| Part | Detail |
|---|---|
| MCU | Arduino Pro Mini |
| LEDs | 5× UV LEDs |
| Serial I/O | Audio jack (3.5 mm), role-fixed wiring |
| Haptics | 10k RPM motor |
| Power | 1650 mAh battery |
| Enclosure | 3D printed; breakout boards + hand soldering |
Goals for 2024
Universal design. More devices. That mandate became PDN MK I in 2024: one PCB program, Hunter or Bounty through lighting and firmware, and a path toward the scale we needed at Neo.