_Lockdown
Sept 2019
Lockdown is a Belgian escape room company with several rooms in Kortrijk and Ghent. For a new zombies-vs-scientists-themed room they needed all kinds of new props to tell a story and provide puzzels. I was hired to make five of these projects.
The most interesting project was the so-called brain wave generator. The idea was that the scientists needed to find three parameters and then turn the knobs on the machine to set them correctly. All parameters manipulate the wave on the screen and when everything is set a signal is given to the central computer of the room. I repurposed an old oscilloscope for this and used an Arduino Mega with an LCD screen to have a modern screen.
The next projects were liquid sensors for a blending
machine and a blood injection. The scientists needed to make an
antidote by pooring different liquids in a machine and revive a
zombie by injecting it with fake blood. This needed to be detected
so I designed a 3D print that hold an IR led an receiver and fits
around a clear tube. When liquid passes through the tube, the IR
receiver detects a change in brightness and triggers.
I soldered a circuitboard for these sensors to easily connect all
components. Both projects use an Arduino Nano.
The final projects were scanner effects for two places in the escape room. One in some kind of x-ray chamber and one in the entrance room, also called the sluice. The x-ray scanner scans up and down several times in a white color, while the sluice scanner moves from strip to strip and blinks in a red or green color depending on whether the scan was successful.
