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Thank you! We had very limited storage (2MB) to work with, and only 480KB of RAM. It was certainly a challenge to get it all to fit!

That's awesome! I'm really happy to see non-tech conventions running badges. It's so cool that with today's technology you truly can "just make things".

What does your badge do? I'd love to see it!

Yes, Hack the North is run at the University of Waterloo!

Mostly cost for us. JLCPCB's scale lets them make money on orders that would be too small for most fabs. Quoting, ordering, and part selection are all a battle tested web form. They also stock most of the parts in-house, so a small order costs them almost no engineering time. A local fab probably wouldn't have any of these advantages. JLCPCB really have it down to a science.

Author here! I'm sure an experienced PCB designer could get it done quicker, but we were in it for the learning aspect too. Hack the North is entirely student run!

My best guess is an experienced designer would have made fewer mistakes and been more familiar with the process, so maybe they save two iterations and can get the initial schematic capture and layout done in a few days rather than a week.

88Hz on the M4 Pro

I saw you present this many years ago at MariHacks! Stuck with me as a really cool idea and project. Awesome to see it still going strong!