After Kalama shows me how to “hack” a comm tower to make it emit a resonant beep, he points at the unfolding text messages on my screen. “You can eavesdrop on a conversation,” he says. “These towers are relaying messages between characters.” I get a little backstory on a gunfight in the marketplace that left a wall pockmarked with divots.
Think about what all that requires. Kerrison’s story team comes up with that bit of plot and writes the dialog of the messages. “Blaster specialists” carve the impact marks into the wet plaster of the walls under construction—the imagineers decided that each one should look different depending on the type of blaster and the angle of impact. Kalama’s interactive group has to code all that into the minigames and link those games to Bluetooth beacons around the park. This fine-grained, fractal detail adds to the sense that not only is Batuu in canon, but so is anyone who buys a ticket.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
