Goal of this project is to create a working prototype for an escape room challenge, consisting of several lights and buttons distributed through several rooms. The objective of the challenge is to find out how to manipulate the color of the different lights and then make every light shine in a certain color, which is the code for revealing the next challenge in the escape room (e.g. open a door or hatch or exposing some information needed for a different challenge). This color code will have to be obtained from the environment.
The demonstration is going to consist of 5 ESP8266 boards that will be controlling one color LED light ring and one push button each, as well as one raspberry pi that will serve as the central logic unit. Communication of the components will be achieved via mqtt with the raspberry running mosquitto. The logic unit will listen to messages signaling a button press and send messages to change the color of the lights according to the rules provided during initialization. A central concept is to make the system flexible so it can be easily initialized with different rules for how the lights change, making it easy to adjust the difficulty of the challenge.
There are several extensions that could be tackled if progress should be quick:
- integration into Area 079
- integration of off-the-shelf smart lighting systems
- enhanced interface of master system for easy integration into an escape room (e.g. button activation by other riddle)
- more advanced rules like behaviour dependent on simultanious button presses
- ... the sky is the limit :)
| calendar week | task |
|---|---|
| 20 | creating rule initialization concept |
| 21 | setup mosquitto |
| 22 | build and code LED and button modules |
| 23 | code logic unit |
| 24 | code initialization interface |
| 25 | integrate init interface and logic |
| 26 | test and assert first prototype |
| 27 | extend interface for smart lighting |
| 28 | integrate system into Area 069 |
| 29 | integrate system into Area 069 |
The project will be regarded a ...
- minor success >>> if we manage to implement a hardcoded light color challenge prototype
- moderate success >>> if we manage to implement an easily initializable prototpye
- major success >>> if we manage to implement one of the possible extensions
- magnificent success >>> if we manage to implement at least two extensions
Octopart: https://octopart.com/bom-tool/5xsz3Dhn