Project · Escape rooms
Electronic puzzles for escape rooms: how we designed and built them
Conceptech designed and built electronic puzzles for escape rooms, with sensors, maglocks, light, sound and control designed to work game after game. Here is how, and how that work carries into our products and machines today.
The project at a glance
- Industry
- Escape rooms and interactive installations
- Scope
- Design and production of electronic puzzles and their controllers
- Conceptech's role
- Developer and builder: we designed, assembled and supplied the puzzles and controllers
- Disciplines
- Electronics, firmware, mechanics and the game GUI
Electronic puzzles
What electronic puzzles did we build?
These are the types of puzzle Conceptech designed and built for escape rooms, as a single puzzle or several for the same room. Clients we've worked with include Xcape and QuestiOn.
Maglocks and door releases
Magnetic locks, solenoids and relays that opened when the puzzle was solved, wired safely to the controller.
Sensors and contacts
Sensors that detected an object placed in position, a button pressed or something moved, as the basis of a puzzle.
Motion and orientation sensors
Props that reacted to movement and orientation, with an IMU sensor and LEDs that showed the state of the puzzle.
Light, sound and effects
LED dimming, light and sound effects triggered by the puzzle, and laser mazes.
Mechatronic, mechanical and pneumatic puzzles
Cipher wheels, a Da Vinci-style cryptex, moving walls and pneumatic mechanisms.
A computer game as part of the room
An on-screen game linked to props in the room, such as a slot machine with a lever and a token sensor, built in Unity or Qt.
Combined puzzles
Puzzles in which we combined several of these: sensors, a mechanism, effects and a screen.
A puzzle we built
Cube Puzzle: an electronic escape room puzzle
What the video shows
An aluminium-framed cube with coloured LED lighting, on a wooden surface and on a floor: its lit interior and an LED strip are visible, then close-ups of the controller board and wiring inside. On-screen labels: ergonomic and robust design, aluminium frame, fully programmable, 24+ hrs of battery life, RGB LED indication.
An aluminium-framed cube with a motion sensor (IMU), a controller board and coloured LED lighting inside. Players solve the puzzle by tilting the cube in the right order and directions, and the lighting shows the state of the puzzle. The cube is programmable.
The video shows the lit cube, then close-ups of the controller board and wiring inside. Conceptech developed, assembled and supplied it.
From our track record
Quest Controller: the puzzle board we designed
Conceptech designed the Quest Controller as a control board for escape-room puzzles and props, and for art installations. The principles we built into it still go into every controller we design today.
The board was based on an Arduino Nano, so it could be programmed with familiar tools. It brought together on one board what a typical puzzle needs:
- MOSFET outputs for LED lighting and inductive loads such as maglocks, relays and solenoids.
- An audio module with a memory card, for sound effects without a separate computer.
- Opto-isolated inputs and outputs, for a safe connection to other equipment in the room.
- Protection: resettable fuses, reverse-polarity protection, filtering and a solid ground plane against interference.
We take the same approach today when we design a controller for a product or a machine: a board built from the start for daily use, not a dev board with jumper wires, with protection designed into the first schematic. More on PCB and circuit board design.
Reliability
What we learned about reliability
An escape room puzzle runs several times a day, in front of players who pull, push and try everything. So we designed each puzzle to take that from the start.
- Electrical protection: against over-current, short circuits, surges and noise, so a single fault doesn't take a puzzle down in the middle of a game.
- Hidden, anchored cabling: cables players can't see or pull, and connectors that don't work loose.
- Ergonomics: a puzzle that is comfortable for players and staff, with easy access to anything that needs resetting or replacing.
- Testing in three stages: at assembly, at installation in the room and at handover, before the room opened to players.
We apply the same principles today to products and machines that work in front of users and operators. Firmware is part of reliability too: it has to behave the same way every time it runs, and return to a known state after a reset. Firmware development for controllers and products
From puzzle to today
Same engineering, today: puzzles to products and machines
The technology we built into puzzles is the same technology we develop today for products and plants.
01
From an IMU in a cube to a prototype
A motion sensor, controller and lighting inside a cube. Today that is our work on engineering prototypes for new products.
02
From maglocks to machine actuation
Locks, solenoids and relays driven safely by the controller. Today: actuation and controls in custom production machines.
03
From reliability checks to test stations
Every puzzle was tested at assembly, installation and handover. Today we build stations that test every unit to one procedure.
04
From an on-screen game to a firmware GUI
A Unity or Qt game linked to props in the room. Today: display GUIs with buttons and indicator LEDs, in the product's firmware.
Building an interactive product, a prototype or a machine?
Tell us briefly what you're building and what it needs to do. An engineer will reply with questions and an initial direction.
Usually a reply within 3 working hours, by email or phone