Escape Room Puzzle Tutorial - "Symbol Wheels"

[@SpiceMuffins]

My man did it again! He literally can't stop making awesome puzzles!

[@LionTree]

I adding this puzzle to my Mayan Jungle Rescue. I spent the afternoon designing some vector's for the CNC! Thx for everything you do for the ER community.

[@playhelps-gamesforgood7725]

Hi Alastair, I have been watching your videos since you started and they have always been a great inspiration for my own puzzles. Recently I have been going back over some of the older ones and even in this one,, after 4 years there is the same little smile of joy and satisfaction on your face when the maglock pops! Thanks for your enthusiasm!

[@PlayfulTechnology]

I still giggle like a kid when I solve a puzzle, and I hope I always will :)

[@acps78]

You are literally a genius. Massively underrated. Wish i could learn from you sir!

[@gercovanstraten63]

As always, awesome puzzle and even better explanation. Thanks again!

[@stevenw3017]

What an amazing puzzle! Plus, I never knew about that art program and that'll definitely make my puzzle making easier for even my online puzzles!

[@mfx1]

An interesting twist for harder level games would be to have a table with the center disc painted on it (fixed) and six empty spaces with holes around it you'd then have to find or "earn" the outer discs and as well as line them up you'd also have to figure out the correct location for each disc to start with.

[@PlayfulTechnology]

Thanks for the suggestion! Yes, that would be a great variation, although I suspect it might be quite hard if both the position and rotation of all six outer discs was unconstrained.... would definitely want to do some playtesting and possibly vary the number of symbols/discs accordingly. Another way of increasing the difficulty is to have multiple copies of the same symbol on each disc but only one being correct. Again, Minizinc (my new favourite program!) can help come up with and test alternative layouts.

[@beezlehorse]

@@PlayfulTechnology As a multi-layered puzzle, you could have them earn the discs, reveal their locations on the board, and then solve the final puzzle. It could be a nice bottleneck into the final room or final goal.

[@mfx1]

Inductive sensors are quite cheap these days and you can then use a metal plate/disc on the back giveing a more controllable/defined and less critical detection area.

[@DowntheWrabbitHole]

This is awesome! I wish you were my neighbor and could just make me things like this for my escape room games. I'm too chicken to dive into the world of arduino and electronics by myself, but I'd LOVE LOVE LOVE to have puzzles like this in my escape rooms.

[@kuyaerwin0507]

Very nice my dear friend, uou are very creative sending my hugs and support, lovelots👍👍

[@markgearing]

I’m going to guess it’ll take a maximum of six tries, the six different orientations of the centre wheel. For rapid solving, on each orientation you can dismiss it if two other wheels forming a triangle with the centre wheel can’t simultaneously match symbols with each other and the centre. As for what’s going on in the background, it could be as complex as an Arduino or as simple as a series circuit of reed switches to drive a relay on the maglock. Nice puzzle. Could be intimidating or quick depending on how you approach it. Now to watch the video and see how I did.

[@MichaelLeibman]

I had the same though just when I started watching this video. The puzzle is pretty trivial and really quick to solve since you only have six combinations to try at most, and for the ones that don't work, you usually only have to make a few rotations before things don't line up and you move on to the next one. Was wondering if I was missing something when I heard him say that solving this by trying every combination could take quite a while.

[@joshuavickers3233]

It is still a great puzzle concept, and here is how you can evolve the difficulty: Use clues and a cipher to assign a direction, number of spaces and a wheel number. Players must first line up the wheels as you have mentioned, but then must use a sequence of turns of each wheel to find the actual solution. Assign each turn (e.g. wheel 1, turn clockwise 2 spaces, wheel 2, turn anti clockwise 3 spaces, and so on) and provide clues that indicate this, and a cipher to help them calculate which wheel must be turned first, or rather, which wheel is "1" through "7". So in summary, they line them all up, then use clues to spin them all to the correct placements.

[@applejuice1000000]

Hello! I'm starting to build my first puzzles, these are extremely helpful! Thank you very much :)

[@manyshadesofbrown]

You should definitely create a course covering escape room design

[@jengalli6222]

do you have a library or something for the relay and mag lock on fritzing?

[@rondlh20]

Nice, add some sound effects at random to scare the players :D

[@catworldtoast]

Where can you get a Giant Key like that?

[@DjairGuilherme]

If you place any of the disks in any of the positions and the disks are aligned with the magnets in the correct positions, the system will unlock the lock. The only way to ensure that the system opens the lock using only the correct alignment of the symbols on the disks is to keep the disks secured to the main board.

[@PlayfulTechnology]

That's correct - in this puzzle, the discs are in fixed places and only their rotation is changed. You could make a variation where players also had to decide where to place each disc, but that would make the puzzle *significantly* harder! Far too hard for a typical escape room, I suspect.

[@DAveShillito]

Very nice :) One comment... you showed Minizinc checking that the arrangement you provided had only one correct solution, but how did you reach that arrangement? Was it a case of manually entering possible patterns in Minizinc and testing until you found one that worked? Or is there a programmatic method of approaching that side of the problem? Either way, I now want to build one of these, even though I have no use for it at all :)

[@PlayfulTechnology]

So that's a great question! Yes, you're absolutely right: for this particular example, I knew that there was one possible solution already (because I laid it out in Inkscape as such), so I manually entered the symbols on each wheel as a hardcoded value into Minizinc to test whether that was unique. But, I could have written the Minizinc code in a different way so that it came up with the solution for me instead - i.e. making the symbols on each wheel a decision variable rather than a parameter. So long as you can express the puzzle as a series of logical constraints, Minizinc can create/solve any puzzle - including Sudoku, "Einstein" puzzles (i.e. "Who owns the Zebra"?), 15-square slidey puzzles, magic squares,... it's great!

[@abencomo]

Very cool tutorial! Thank you for putting it together and sharing it. Do you think you can recreated it using Unity to run it on smartphone or tablet?

[@DocG2024]

great

[@escaperoomescapades4991]

Hi, Alastair! If you were to add the lazy susans, you would increase the distance between the board and the disks. Would this be problematic in terms of the magnet sensors?

[@PlayfulTechnology]

Hi! You're right that it raises the wheel slightly, but the magnet is still well within detection range of the sensor. If you're concerned about, you can route out a section from the wheels and the base, so that the plate of the Lazy Susan lies flush with the surface.

[@vivianduty879]

Do you sell your puzzles and props?

[@fthef692]

Thank you for the instructions. I’ve made the puzzle but have a bit more to do. One issue is with power. Only having the 12v power to the relay wouldn’t power the relay or nano. I had to add another 12v power to the breadboard that I have the nano on. Is that how it should work? Is it ok to have 12v directly to the breadboard with the nano? Thank you

[@PlayfulTechnology]

What wattage is your power supply rated for? The maglock should only consume 1 or 2A at most, the Nano significantly less.

[@fthef692]

@@PlayfulTechnology it’s rated for 48 watts. Currently, I have that powering through the relay and maglock. Then I have a mini usb in the nano plugged into a wall outlet

[@KrazeeKraftZ]

My magnetic contacts that arrived today, have 3 wires, black red and white, hmm...

[@jonathangreene2108]

I paused the video when I saw the wiring so I could comment an easier way to wire the puzzle. Then I played the video and realized you already explained why you didn’t do the easier way. I think I prefer the simple wiring because there is less points of failure. Also less power required. And no programming.

[@escaperoombreckenridge7162]

Can you tell me how to do it without the arduino? I have a similar setup that was put in by someone else. I continue to have issues with the mag lock releasing early. I have troubleshooted many many hours and my conclusion is that the reed switches are fine but they are daisy chained (and do not know what order) to a relay. Sometimes it only takes 2 to be in the correct position and it seems to actually be a power issue. The relay shows that the puzzle is not “solved” but the relay loses power for a fraction of a second and because of this the mag lock releases. I do not have an arduino, nor the knowledge of arduinos and prefer to not have to use another power source. Can you please share how to do this without an arduino?

[@jonathangreene2108]

@@escaperoombreckenridge7162 when doing reed switch puzzle I use a 1 amp 12v power supply and a 12v relay and a 12v mag lock. I use a couple connector rails to connect the positive and negative to power the relay and connect positive to the middle of the relay and I connect the left side of the relay to the positive end of the mag lock. The negative end connects to the negative connector rail. Then I run a wire from the positive connector rail to through all of the switches in series and then to the relay. When all the switches are “on” the relay turns off the mag lock. If the relay is wired correctly I don’t think it matters if the relay is powered or not it should still keep the mag lock locked until it receives the signal to switch.

[@nicolettecusick7417]

@@jonathangreene2108 thank you. I don’t quite understand all of this. If you can provide links to any of these products I would certainly appreciate it. Specifically “connector rails” “couple connector”

[@jonathangreene2108]

@@nicolettecusick7417 they are called screw terminals. I use them to connect multiple things to one power supply. It may be overkill but it is more secure than a bread board and is easy to reuse for other projects.

[@jonathangreene2108]

@@nicolettecusick7417 I tried to post a link but it gets deleted. If you search screw terminal strip you should find them.

[@pierartets9027]

is it possible to get the arduino code?

[@PlayfulTechnology]

Sure. You can copy it down from the video - I show every line. Or, all of my escape room projects are available to download for my Patreon subscribers: www.patreon.com/playfultech

[@professional5332]

@@PlayfulTechnology Any chance you have it in javascript?

[@PlayfulTechnology]

@@professional5332 Have what in Javascript? Arduino code is in C.

[@hugaoNm]

PISUSHIIT

[@squeakytoyz]

I have copied your code from the video. When I am attempting to upload I am getting compile errors. My wife is trying to make this for my sons graduation party next month, Can you lend a hand? WheelEscapePuzzle.ino:46:1: error: 'output' does not name a type output [“ Wheel 6 (Top-Left): “, show(wheel6[((wheelRotations[6]) mod numSymbols)+1])]; ^~~~~~

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

guess not