Accelerometer-Enabled Harry Potter Wands Cast Spells in Sound and Light

In his latest video, wermy, AKA sudomod, was asked to help with a Harry potter trivia tournament. While they wanted a buzzer system to…

Jeremy Cook
5 years ago

In his latest video, wermy, AKA sudomod, was asked to help with a Harry Potter trivia tournament. While they wanted a buzzer system to determine which player had an answer, he wasn’t content with simple buttons for this magical event, and instead made wizardly interface devices in the form of wands.

Inside each rather thick wand, wermy embedded an nRF24L01 transceiver module, along with a battery, a LiPo charger, an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M0 Express, and an MP-6500 inertial measurement unit. When a player “buzzes” in by flicking the wand, a signal is sent to a base unit that runs on an Adafruit Feather 32u4 Basic Proto board with another nRF24L01 module. This emits a spell sound, and activates a strip of LEDs that zip from one player to another. LEDs are placed behind a dark castle-themed cloth, which provides an excellent diffuser, and largely conceals the electronics, allowing people to instead focus on the quiz and spell effect.

In addition to the wands, a host remote also interfaces with the base unit, enabling the person running the event to pause the game, signal that a question is ready, and input that a correct or incorrect response has been entered. This device runs on an Adafruit Feather M0 Express, and contains yet another nRF24L01. As seen in the video below, it’s a fun setup, and from a technical standpoint, it’s a great illustration of how several wireless transceiver modules can be used together for multi-node control.

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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