Play with Us
Hackaday Supercon
2024
At Hackaday Supercon 2024 in Pasadena, Alleycat lead engineer Elli Furedy gave a lightning talk: Cyberpunk Bounty Hunting: Technology for Immersive Experiences. The deck was for makers: how Alleycat builds hardware for Neotropolis, a live cyberpunk LARP in the Mojave where thousands of people show up as original characters, not imported cosplay.
Elli framed the goal in plain terms: technology that helps strangers interact in physical space, engaging enough that people actually use it on the field, accessible enough that you do not need a manual in your pocket. Andrea Furedy's accessibility work runs through that line: the PDN should be an icebreaker, not homework.
On stage Elli walked three hardware eras (not three versions of the same board):
- 2022, Data Crypt: Fully analog, laser-cut acrylic, capture-the-flag play, and a mountain of staff paperwork
- 2023, Proto-PDN: First microcontroller nodes, 3D-printed Shoe enclosures, separate Hunter and Bounty hardware that could not grow with the game
- 2024, PDN MK I: ESP32-S3 custom PCB, OLED, LEDs, haptics, one device flashed for either role, the crisis-build year we still shipped to Neo
The deck closed with Neo 2024 results on screen: 115 captures from the top Hunter over three days, 42 evades from the top Bounty, and 100+ unique players. PDN software had gone open source that season, and this talk was part of how the wider maker community found the project.
Slides, specs, design failures, and team lessons are on the dispatch page. The embedded video is Elli's segment (28:55) in Hackaday's lightning-talk reel.