In an escape room, LEDs can do a lot of heavy-lifting when it comes to the feeling of immersion. Although “Iced” was a lock and key puzzle, the pulsing LEDs in the background elevated the puzzle and made it feel very high tech.
Most of this puzzle was build on the laser machine at my Makerspace. I was able to cut the backboard, the letters, and the boxes on the ends of the LED tube out of 1/8″ thick birch plywood.
The LEDs were generic addressable LEDs from Amazon. The lights were powered by an Arduino Nano. Since the light display I was going for was relatively I was able to modify example code from the NeoPixel library.
I was very happy with how the puzzle turned out. The room started off semi-dark which really made the white LEDs stand out!