ESPHome Powered Birthday Theme Park Attraction - Simulated Blow Guns | ESPHome | Page 1

uncut hearth Jul 24, 2025, 6:22 PM

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My wife always likes to go all-out for our twins' birthday, and I work as production assistant/engineer. This year the theme is Indiana Jones. If you've ever been on the Disneyland ride, there's a segment where they simulate getting shot at by blowguns with pressurized air. Anyway, discussing the theme this year I realized "hey, I can do that!" and what better to power a microcontroller project like that than a framework I'm already familiar with? I set it up with an XL9535 board and a bunch of cheap solenoid valves from Amazon, plus a bunch of push-connect fittings, nylon air hose, and my home compressor. Also, too much wire. Way too much wire. Next time I have an idea like this I think I'll just buy more 3-way Wago connectors and daisy chain the ground wire between all of them instead of 2-conductor wire all of the way back to the relays.

I haven't dressed it up yet, but all the tubes and wires will get covered up with black dollar store tablecloths and I'll punch the nozzles through them. The rest of the garage will get a treasure cave treatment.

config: https://github.com/smithjacobj/esphome-configs/blob/210703fed258d159495f1f51a4370f53fbe934d6/base-configs/16-relay-board/config.yaml

red meadow Jul 24, 2025, 7:04 PM

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This is awesome! And I thought we went all out with a obstacle course in our local pe hall 😂 Great work man! your kids gonna treasure these things for the rest of their lives! 👏🏻

uncut hearth Jul 29, 2025, 3:06 AM

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I should include my updated randomized config that I threw together right before the party, but here is the video of the entire scene

woeful flame Jul 30, 2025, 2:23 AM

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Psst where is the rolling boulder? (Love it)

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Did you make a weight sensor on the skull that could trigger the boulder 😄

uncut hearth Jul 31, 2025, 11:03 PM

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@woeful flame that would have been cool but I avoided automatic triggers as I wanted reliability and didn't have the spare time to test triggers. The blowgun bit was on loop. The boulder was another section