Friday Hacks #287
Friday Hacks #287
Friday Hacks, by NUS Hackers, is a weekly event where invited speakers share their technical experiences and interests! In this week's session, we have:
1) Quack & Roll: How we created H&R 2026's hardware badges
A hackathon souvenir that’s more than just swag - how do you make it real? In this talk, Hack&Roll 2026 organizers - Lim Yik Jin and Terence Chan - share the story behind the event’s custom hardware badges: why they built them, how they planned the experience, and what it takes to turn an idea into something that can be produced reliably at hackathon scale.
What you’ll take away
A high-level look at the end-to-end process: concept → design → prototyping → production
The trade-offs that matter when you’re building for a real event
Lessons learned from building hardware under tight deadlines - and what they’d do differently next time
2) NUSMods: Building the timetable planner NUS relies on
How does a student project grow into a tool used by tens of thousands - and stay fast, reliable, and maintainable?
In this talk, Li Kai, a member of the NUSMods core team, shares how NUSMods started as a better way to plan timetables, how it evolved over time, and what the system looks like behind the scenes at a high level.
What you’ll take away
A high-level overview of how NUSMods is built
How to think about building and maintaining tools used by a large student community
Key lessons from scaling a student-built product into a campus essential