Learn to Make Your Own Rising Pedestal Escape Room Prop
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
- In this video I'll demonstrate how to build a "rising pedestal" prop - which can be used as an impressive finale for a bank heist, art gallery, sci-fi, or other themed escape room.
A prize item is displayed on a platform of the pedestal, but is completely encased preventing players from accessing it. Instead, they must first solve a puzzle which triggers a relay to supply power to a linear actuator. This causes a rising platform to lift up, exposing the item through an access hole in the top of the pedestal!
The pedestal is assembled from MDF and plywood, with four 8mm steel rods and LM8UU bearings. The rising mechanism uses a 12V linear actuator, a dual-channel relay, controlled by an ESP32 (or Arduino/Raspberry Pi/STM32 etc.). The total cost of components and construction is under £100.
The pedestal motion is controlled by three simple functions in the code running on the controller: rise(), fall(), and stop(). These can be called from any of the examples I've previously demonstrated on this channel - e.g. based on a button input, a keypad, RFID, Hall sensor, or touch sensor, making it easy to integrate this prop into any sort of puzzle .
00:00:00 - 00:01:01 Introduction and Demonstration
00:01:02 - 00:03:26 Design
00:03:27 - 00:04:32 Physical Construction
00:04:33 - 00:07:07 Rising Platform
00:07:08 - 00:07:57 Electronic Controller
00:07:58 - 00:12:28 Wiring the Linear Actuator
00:12:29 - 00:18:45 Arduino / ESP32 code
00:18:46 - 00:19:56 Wrapup
If you enjoyed this video or found it helpful, please like and subscribe to this channel. And, if you'd like to download the resources used in all the escape room projects shown on this channel (and support me to continue making more tutorials in the future!), please check out my Patreon at / playfultech
#diy #arduino #escaperoom 
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Awesome as always. Thanks for showing the steps and thoughts along the way.
Great guide! Love the production quality on the prop too.
Great idea. I have a few linear actuators.... may have to give this a try! Thanks for sharing
Awesome, thank you for the detail on the electronics!
Alister, awesome, as always!
Thanks for sharing with us. 😄
Excellent work
This is effing awesome dude
love that. Thinking about a reverse version for our space ship self destruct. once all 6 are placed correctly the will lower and light up. have made lifters before but never transparent. great job.
Youre anazing. Happy new year
use H Bridge.
How did you mount the top of the rising part to the metal rods? Is it just glued on?
I've already built this same thing for my escape room (except the item is hidden instead of visible through the glass).
So you've basically designed an XOR circuit using the relays?
That's ingenuous!
Kind of, yes: you're right that the linear actuator will only move if one (and only one) of the inputs is HIGH, so in that sense it's like an XOR. But it's more specific than that, because the direction in which it moves is determined by _which_ of the exclusive inputs was HIGH.
@@PlayfulTechnology That's actually an important distinction. An XOR would simply provide or cut power, whereas here it's switching polarities.
Still it's a very clever way to design it, and one I'd never have thought of.
H BRIDGE, VERY COMMON.
i've tried making this but I am having an issue. many times when the actuator is extending or retracting the relay wil just flip and start doing the opposite and then it may flip back and forth multiple times. any suggestions? I have it hooked up to a reed switch to go up and a button to go down. I have used a multimeter on the reed switches and they seem to work great i have also removed the button and just bridged the wires to eliminate if it was a button failure.
Can you make the linear actuator move faster? I'm looking for a solution to drip an item down inside of a display case and hide the item to make it seem like it disappeared.
Having your pedestal work in reverse would seem about perfect for what I need if it could work a bit faster.
Linear actuators are sold with different speeds - you don't adjust them via a controller, you need to buy one that moves at, say, 2000mm/sec, 3000mm/sec etc.
Great video, I was super excited when I saw it on my feed! I have to ask, is a microcontroller really necessary to switch polarity for the linear actuator? Couldn't I just have a circuit on one channel of the relay (reed switch, RFID, etc) to trigger it, and another circuit (perhaps a hidden button at the GM station or inside the prop) on the second channel to retract it?
There's no reason why that wouldn't work. I assume Allister used the microcontroller because he's used to it, and it allows easy integration with software like Node-Red. That way if a team is stuck he could trigger it remotely, he could have a puzzle in another location of the room send a command to initiate it and so on.
But having it self contained with a reed switch, NFC tag and so on, is perfectly fine.
@@s3rth30 good point, I guess I'm just intimidated by having to develop code and would rather find hardware solutions to everything, lol!
@@javcis31 Understandable, if you feel more confident in a hardware only solution. Although the code is easy and small enough that one might even call it beginner friendly, should you desire to sink your teeth in. It's definitely easier than other projects he's done anyway.
@@javcis31 Same here. So in your simple reed switch hardware solution what else is needed to get this to go up and retract? I use reed switches to cut power to mag locks but need to be educated how to use them to switch polarity for a linear actuator
@@kriszylich154 I believe only a two channel relay is needed to pull it off, the first channel being used to raise the actuator while the other retracts it. The first channel would be triggered by the puzzle being solved, and the second by a hidden button, key switch, or reed switch somewhere in the prop.
If I wanted to buy something like that, how much would it cost?
may i know the playful tech PATREON 10 USD is everymonth or per annual ? thank you so much
Cool idea! but what if players stuck fingers inside the box when it rises?
You can't have your fingers inside the box when it rises - it's sealed on all sides. (You could theoretically get your fingers stuck when it closes again, but I'm assuming this would be something that GMs do to reset the room)
@Playful Technology how about the hole on the top, where the diamond comes out? If the players rush to take the diamond and puts hand inside from the hole?
@@Mysteeritaiteilija Exactly my first though: this rising platform clearly has a pinching hazard. However, it probably isnt a probably as long as the motor doesnt have too much force.
@@Mysteeritaiteilija you could put the jewel holder on springs so pinch would be minimal. And make where it doesn't lower until reset after game over by GM. Or make the top out of foam board so it would just tear out.
What about the obvious risk of crushing when it goes down? Or is it just for looks?
While the game is in progress, the only action necessary is for the platform to _rise_, revealing the item. So there is no risk of anything getting crushed. Replacing the item and making the platform go down again would normally be performed by a gamesmaster as part of a reset operation.
@@PlayfulTechnology I see. That makes sense!
If worried you can limit the maximum current the motor can take to just enough to operate it which will limit the torque in the event something jams/gets stuck and not just fingers, maybe the item somehow gets knocked off centre so jams against the top of the case for example. I always build in stall protection into anything involving motors as secondary method which also provides am alarm/fault detection facility is to monitor the motor current with the Arduino A/D and a current sense resistor.
hello how are you helpfull
Does anyone have a resource where I can get that fast of a linear actuator. Besides fightprops. I've been looking for a while, only seems to be sloooow once out there.
I posted the source of the exact model I'm using... it's 30mm/second, 1000N lifting force, 300mm stroke length, www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124219350197