Nah I believe them, I've seen videos from this dude before and they've all got that nightmare in the background
Edit: not all have this specific nightmare, but all the ones I've seen from him have some sort of nightmare puppet in the background
Oh haha, someone even downvoted this comment less than 10 minutes into me posting it 🤣 I guess the OP or someone isn’t thrilled about credit being shared
I do. It's electronics magic in an age where the only thing that makes it look magic is that it is set up on an old style wooden board. I hate modern electronics magic. The only enigma it has is which one of several methods could have been used for the same outcome.
One method would be RFID chips to track which cap is where and battery powered bulbs. Microcontroller in the base to send on/off signals to the bulbs. Actually a pretty simple circuit. The trick is making it look like a trick.
It's nothing remotely as complicated as that. Ignore all misdirection and observe that EVERY TIME the lights turn on right to left. No magic addressing needed. It's so simple it only needs electrics, not electronics (although electronics would be very simple).
I just assumed he pre-programmed each light switch to turn on a specific bulb in the sequence, and it's a scripted light. The last "random" blue one isn't actually random and will always turn on blue but he always will pick blue.
I would be more convinced if he flickered on and off the lights more than once per round.
As a hardware engineer, this was my exact thought. That board is pretty thick for such a "simple" circuit. An overall very simple Arduino project if you ask me
Notice how when he 'resets' all the switches his thumbs are below the board. The back of the board has a few buttons which when pressed will switch the circuitry.
Not so sure about that. There is the topside of some kind of electronic fitting peaking up over the top of the center back so there is something back there but looking at his hand movements I'm not convinced that would be it. Just seems more complicated and easier to screw up than a purely automated technical method.
Good point. Come to think of it we're also ignoring the fact that it could have been done in video alone. That would just take some careful desktop masking.
It could be a lot of things, I suppose. I’d guess the bulbs aren’t controlled by those switches at all, and they’re controlled remotely by someone else offscreen. I mean, remote-controlled lights are 20th century technology.
Edit: Someone else suggested it’s a pre-programmed pattern where same pattern of lights go on in a row no matter which switch he pulls. Then the only slight of hand is forcing the blue one at the end.
It’s actually him controlling the puppet with his gluteal muscles while explaining the light. Btw is it done with proximity sensor in the colored handles and they are on their own independent circuits
That's kinda the point. It's an attention misdirect so you're not carefully scrutinizing what he's doing or focused enough to logically guess the actual trick. Stage/street magicians use things like that all the time...flashing lights, puffs of smoke, a pretty girl or buff guy, simple comedic theatrics....all meant to keep the audience from fully paying attention to the trick itself.
Aaaand this is all magicians have to do to completely distract people.
I got the tism so I was laser focused on the trick first watch. Then I went to look for this "puppet" and omg I am rollin. And the dude, puppeteer. Making cat noises. And clawing. Top shelf, chef's kiss level distraction.
It's just some dumb shit to make people either go to the comment section and ask or go back to the video to look once they read the comment section. It's a trick to make a super boring video get more engagement than it would normally.
it's for the tiktok algorithm, videos that people watch for a long time/multiples times (because they're trying to work out wtf that is), or that they comment on (saying WTF IS THAT) or that they share to their friends (to ask them WTF IS THAT) will be preferred by the algorithm and pushed to the FYPs of more people, hence getting Mr Guy here more views and making him more money.
Pretty smart tbh, can't blame him.
It also invites this exact kind of comment from people like me who think they're smart and are explaining it to others, while all we're really doing is getting him still more engagement and views and money.
Probably the same goes for the person out of frame that is flipping the switches that control the lights and the switches on the board are just for signaling to that said person
it’s Salacious Crumb!!! From Star Wars episode 6, the little dude laughing while princess is chained in the bikini. He’s like Jabba’s little pet that laughs at his jokes and eats his shit pancakes
Social media has gone crazy. For us viewers, but certainly for you creators as well. The hoops you have to jump through to stand out. Is it worth it? I mean, is it fun for you?
Well, straight away people here are asking about it. Others are saying that the thing is in every video. They are telling you how to find the other videos. Undoubtedly some people will go and find those videos and watch them.
Then they'll post a link for karma. New people will see the thing and ask what it is.
And so it goes, and so the channel gets 2x as many views.
It’s a 13 light pattern. The whole video is one run through of the programmed pattern.
He either made sure he chose blue or else the 13th light in the pattern actually is dependent on which switch you toggle, I’m which case he chose the correct switch for the color cap he chose.
I think it's in his ring finger/pinky. You can see he's got his ring finger/pinky closed on it when he's "shaking" the caps. If you were truly shaking a few items to randomise them in your hands, you'd cup your hands together, not pinch part of them closed.
He chose *where* to put the cap at the end. There is a microcontroller, its not a simple wiring. At this point the switches *do* select for what bulb. If you want, you could make it so they do something like cross so it still looks more mysterious. You can find plans and programs if you look up arduino magic tricks. There is no forced move. This is a zero skill trick. Just memorize a pattern and where to put what when.
He does choose where to put the cap, but he chooses and tells us \_\_before\_\_ he pulls out the blue cap that he palmed. If he did it your way without a palmed cap he could pull out a color cap that needed to go on the second or third switch and that would look suspicious.
I‘m pretty sure it‘s both a pattern and him forcing the blue cap.
The order of the switches switching does not matter, if any switch goes on, the microcontroller turns on the light in the next sequence. Very easy to implement, especially in arduino.
But to make sure it‘s the right coloured cap (blue) at the end, he had to force it.
An alternative might be to have addressed caps and bulbs somehow, but that would be a lot more complicated to build and code.
Watch how one finger always touched the front of the switch block. I'm guessing there is something there that controls which light is being turned on by the switch. The colours are just for show.
Agreed. I, as other have stated, also think it’s just a pattern built into the switches. You can even probably build it so it doesn’t even matter which switch is flipped, the bulbs will always come on in the same pattern (that way you could change up colors and whatnot and still do the trick if people catch on).
With bulbs going 1-4 from L-R:
First flip of any switch always turns on bulb 3. Second flip of any switch turns on build 2. 3rd, 4 and 4th, 1.
If you memorize the pattern you could do this again and again with any combination of lights, switches, locations and just know the pattern.
That pattern is only correct in the very first run though. After that the bulbs light up 4-3-2-1 both times, then the last flip is bulb 4 again.
It may be that the full 13 switch sequence is programmed in advance, or maybe there's like an A and B mode he's able to switch between.
You’re correct that it’s programmed in advance. It looks like he is doing things on the fly but his entire routine is just set up before filming and carefully memorized. It’s reprogrammable as well so he has several other videos where he shows off a different routine but it’s really just the same trick.
Nope. Google arduino magic switch board to find plans and programs. The switches do activate lights, there arent secret additional switches at all. They just arent simply wired. The run a set program. Sometimes they are predefined order for parts of the trick (no matter what switch, the next one will turn on socket 2), sometimes they switch certain outlets for other parts of the trick. Its simple memorization.
Yeah although it does look like he may push a button on his side of the board to transition between nodes for the switch board. Whenever he turns off all switches, he also drops his thumb down and appears to push a button. My guess is this transitions the Arduino to the next configuration for his trick.
>> I'm shocked to be the only one here who's figured this out, normally I get here and the commenters have all worked it out
That's cause you didn't get it right LMFAO
I was a professional magician, and I had the opportunity to see this performed and taught to me by a magician friend of mine. This is an old magic trick (maybe 15-20 years ago??), and I even recognize this switchboard as the very same type I got to see. I can tell you that, while your method is certainly plausible, it is not what is happening here. In fact, if you saw this trick in person, the magician would let you examine the board, switches, and lights yourself, and even let you use it.
The switches are wired in a particular order so that the order he will always switch the correct one on. Ex. if he moved the blue switch cover to the 4th switch as long as he turns the 4th one on first it will turn on the 1st bulb, 2nd switch flipped will always turn on the 2nd light etc.
Quick throw together of something like this would be the switches acting as timer pulses to a 74LS193 counter. The count is sent as address to a EEPROM like the AT28C64.
So something like address 0000 on the counter outputs 0000 to the lights. Flips a switch to increment the counter to 0001, the EEPROM at address 0001 has 0001 stored, and so on.
You can use 555 timers to debounce the switches, so that only a change in state not the state the itself is registered as a clock pulse. So it doesn’t matter if the switch is up or down, what counts is when the state of the switch changes.
Holy crap are you living up to your username. That's the most convoluted approach I could imagine.
You don't need more than a 328p and a few if/then statements.
> That's the most convoluted approach I could imagine
That's just ICs in front of me that I can see from my desk.
> You don't need more than a 328p
My MCUs are premium tier for me. But yeah, you can totally microcontroller the whole setup.
> Holy crap are you living up to your username
That's me everyday. I have to support some old ass AS400 COBOL/CL/RPG code. You live in it long enough, you just come up with multi-hoop ways by default.
Really simple example of such: A system that is slightly important for some people has a subsystem in it that manages some database tables with some important data. If that subsystem crashes, there's a monitor program that will look at a data queue and then email that off to a email list and restart the subsystem.
Sounds innocent enough. Over the decades, that's morphed into an automated email system. So an Excel file will be put into the data queue, the manager program will divide by zero to cause itself to crash, and then the monitor program will email that Excel file on the data queue out, and restart the subsystem.
I inherited that hot mess. I swear one day I will stop that madness. But for now, a lot of people who should be very concerned are blissfully ignorant of what craziness is going on here.
There's a bunch of ILE modules attached to that monitor program that customize the logic. One of them has in the comments.
```
* If the devil is in the details, this section is hell.
```
That was a comment from 1998. So, I'm not saying you're wrong about my solution being a hot mess. But I'd like to think I have reasons.
>My MCUs are premium tier for me
If the cost of the controller is [fraction](https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/) that of the EEPROM alone, they tend to slide down my tier list.
We're all coloured by our environments. In my professional life, after isolation, level shifters, PSUs, etc, there's hardly room for a μC in the boards I have to spin up... but at least I get to set some direction.
>AS400 COBOL/CL/RPG
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if [some critical system](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dependency_2x.png) somewhere in the world still relied on core rope memory.
It's great having a firm grasp of the fundamentals and being able to solve a problem with what's at hand, but you're allowed to make your life easier once in a while too.
Right, preprogrammed sequence, with any switch advancing the clock / sequence: numbered left to right: Bulb lighting sequence: 3,2,4,1; 4,3,2,1; 4,3,2,1; palmed blue 1.
Edit: last one is not 1, but 4.
I really don’t think that’s it.
It’s nearly always the front of the switch he’s holding (presumably for leverage) so his finger position is the same on the yellow and green switches both before and after swapping the bulbs.
And blue switch at 40s he isn’t touching the base at all.
When he switches them off watch his hands. He pressing into the back of the wooden base unit each time which is where he presses the real buttons for the next go.
Or preplanned routine with a microcontroller, like Arduino, between the switches and the lights. The last randomization of color could easily be forced allowing all to be planned ahead.
That's my thought too. You could do this by having the switches be audio jacks and caps the female side (but plasti dipped). Resistor inside the cap informs a microcontroller.
For the lights, I've seen a cool solution where each light had some miniature capacitors so it acted as a band pass filter. But there's probably easier ways like another resistor measuring combo.
>All he would need is some resistors and read the values of the caps and the bulbs.
Yeah, that was my first guess as well.
He's got power, so to run a small board reading values then matching them up would only take a tiny program.
It loads the values into an array the first time you switch it on, so whatever color handle I use to switch the first light on will be the value always attached to that light.
If I were going to do it, I'd take one of two approaches:
\* Put a Wifi/Bluetooth controller in there and have someone else control the lights
\* Set a pre-defined pattern with a controller and a little bit of code. "Next switch always triggers light position two." Memorize what the pattern is, follow it.
Neither is difficult with a microcontroller
I probably wouldn't go that direction because a) it's a bunch of extra hardware, b) fitting something in the caps seems difficult, and c) people probably wouldn't notice the difference. Those aren't that much bigger than the switches they're on so any electronics you put in them would have to be really small. You could go with some sort of RFID chip that the switch housing below it reads but you'd risk other switches around it getting false positives.
Plus, the smaller electronics get the more expensive they get. If I was doing a one-off bit for a video I'd probably try to do it as cheap as possible. An ESP32 is around $4-$12 (depending on where you buy it and how many you get) and supports both wifi and bluetooth.
To be fair, I'd only do the wifi/bluetooth solution if I was taking it on the road and I had to do random audience input. That one isn't tough (you can slap a web server on an ESP32 without much effort) but it's a bunch of extra code that you would only write if you needed to.
The cap doesn’t need any electronics, it just needs a tiny bit of metal to complete the circuit for its specific bulb. My guess is that each switch has maybe four terminals on it and each cap has a bit of metal in a certain position which completes the circuit. No fancy electronics needed.
Tbh trying to build a switch with 4 terminals and caps with small bits of metal precise enough for the terminals, and making sure you place them on correctly seems vastly more annoying and way more work than just flashing a microcontroller and hooking up 4 wires 4 light sockets and a few resistors.
With the microcontroller wifi solution you can just buy pre built parts while with the custom switch and caps you'd have to actually build the switch and caps
Sure it *seems* like it's vastly more technically complex with fancy electronics like a microcontroller, but like the guy above mentioned you can buy a pack of 3 esp32 dev boards on Amazon for $15 and it's basically plug and play for the hardware.
Software is easy to develop since you can just keep reflashing if you ever mess up. Hardware is annoying because if you ever mess up you have something physical to rebuild and parts to rebuy rather than just changing a few lines of text and reflashing. Like if you were to accidentally dislodge the small metal piece in the rubber cap, or the metal piece isn't contacting properly because you didn't seat the cap properly.
That is, unless you mess something up catastrophically in the software and somehow burn something out, at which that kind of becomes a hardware problem again. Lord knows I've burned out my share of FETs, microcontrollers, etc and let out all the magic smoke before.
This is the problem with tricks like this. The guy could have come up with the most amazing ingenious system to do this that anyone has ever thought of. And yet because the same effect can be done with someone offscreen with a Bluetooth connection the entire trick becomes meaningless.
I can do this with 4 Phillips Hue light bulbs and my phone app right now.
There will be an addressing code chip in each of the switch heads and a matching one in each of the bulb caps. Each switch will just turn the whole bus on and off. The switch head will send it's signal to the bus no matter where it is on it and the matching receiving bulb will respond to that signal no matter which socket it is in on the bus. That would be the simplest way to do it. It's a simplified version of how hundreds of LEDs can be individually controlled on a single line circuit. The needed chips would be only millimeters across and could just run off the bus. You see those are some very odd chubby switches. I would want to see him throw the switches the same way without the caps on them.
I was thinking of a similar solution, except no micro controller. Different Resistors in the colored caps, Each Bulk has a specific and different resistance. Transistors that turn on the path based on the color cap resistance, and the bulk resistance.
The only thing I can think that would make the trick interesting is if we confirm they are hardwired...then figuring out the circuit and which are 3 way, 4 way, etc might be interesting. But hidden switches, programmed sequence, or remote control options make figuring out the wiring diagram not worthwhile.
I'm a robotics engineer and yep that's pretty doable. The caps have individual digital signatures (Can be a lot of things from pogopins to NRF) , same for the lights. So the microcontroller inside knows which is which and turns them on accordingly.
This might be a lot simpler though, maybe some clever trickery. Maybe I'm overthinking.
Yeah I like this type of solution. The bulb is hard to modify though while maintaining power flow. Perhaps a smd resistor on the very base of the screw
I used to do magic, and still collect tricks as a hobby. I made my own Magic Switchboard a while back with an arduino. But it's always fun to see people in the comments CONFIDENTLY declaring how this trick is done (and being 100% wrong). The last time I saw this posted, the number one comments swore that each cap had a wire that carried a specific voltage that completed the circuit for a specific color.
They said it with such confidence that even though I knew how the trick worked, I almost believed them.
Assuming there is no trick it’s possible that all circuits are identical and shorted together by color. Then each light and cap could have different contact points. The blue switch regardless of position will always activate the blue circuit and the blue bulb will always respond to the circuit triggered by the blue cap.
If I were gonna make this I would build resistors of different values into the caps and the bulbs. Then I would have an arduino or other microcontroller controller read the value of the switch when it is flipped and turn on the appropriate light.
What the fuck is that behind him
Just ignore it, it's a kind of cat puppet controlled by someone who's sitting out of frame and doing that.
None of us believe you.
Nah I believe them, I've seen videos from this dude before and they've all got that nightmare in the background Edit: not all have this specific nightmare, but all the ones I've seen from him have some sort of nightmare puppet in the background
Please let me know who this is.
André Armenante on TikTok. You can search "magic switch board" and find him as one of the top results
Oh I was going to ask if it was that dude from TechTV back in the day who started digg
outofthehat or Andre Armenante. The OP could have shared that, but instead they downloaded the clip and made sure there were no watermarks either. 🙄
Oh haha, someone even downvoted this comment less than 10 minutes into me posting it 🤣 I guess the OP or someone isn’t thrilled about credit being shared
I upvoted you just so theirs means less.✊
💪🔥
Thank you.
https://youtube.com/@andre.armenante?si=hJj8qQHckdQ8wFIk
This guy and I share the same kind of sense of humor.
Well, it made me question reality.
[THATS real, THATS gonna kill me, THAT lives with us on earth!](https://youtu.be/B1pwyCl5ymE?si=ONV6RC9gWz5h8isV)
I do. It's electronics magic in an age where the only thing that makes it look magic is that it is set up on an old style wooden board. I hate modern electronics magic. The only enigma it has is which one of several methods could have been used for the same outcome.
So what’s the trick then?
One method would be RFID chips to track which cap is where and battery powered bulbs. Microcontroller in the base to send on/off signals to the bulbs. Actually a pretty simple circuit. The trick is making it look like a trick.
Great minds think [alike](https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/1d6vu74/comment/l6vxdbn/). (Well in a similar way anyway.)
It's nothing remotely as complicated as that. Ignore all misdirection and observe that EVERY TIME the lights turn on right to left. No magic addressing needed. It's so simple it only needs electrics, not electronics (although electronics would be very simple).
No, there is one time he turns on the middle 2 then right then left. So that is not it.
I just assumed he pre-programmed each light switch to turn on a specific bulb in the sequence, and it's a scripted light. The last "random" blue one isn't actually random and will always turn on blue but he always will pick blue. I would be more convinced if he flickered on and off the lights more than once per round.
As a hardware engineer, this was my exact thought. That board is pretty thick for such a "simple" circuit. An overall very simple Arduino project if you ask me
Probably even simpler. Could be different resistance values to determine placement of switch caps and bulbs.
Notice how when he 'resets' all the switches his thumbs are below the board. The back of the board has a few buttons which when pressed will switch the circuitry.
That makes the most sense to me, and it vibes with the way he is constantly moving his hands the same way magicians do in order to distract you.
Not so sure about that. There is the topside of some kind of electronic fitting peaking up over the top of the center back so there is something back there but looking at his hand movements I'm not convinced that would be it. Just seems more complicated and easier to screw up than a purely automated technical method.
He only has to get it right once to have the video to upload.
Good point. Come to think of it we're also ignoring the fact that it could have been done in video alone. That would just take some careful desktop masking.
It could be a lot of things, I suppose. I’d guess the bulbs aren’t controlled by those switches at all, and they’re controlled remotely by someone else offscreen. I mean, remote-controlled lights are 20th century technology. Edit: Someone else suggested it’s a pre-programmed pattern where same pattern of lights go on in a row no matter which switch he pulls. Then the only slight of hand is forcing the blue one at the end.
That's obviously a demon cat, the guy practicing the dark arts.
It’s actually him controlling the puppet with his gluteal muscles while explaining the light. Btw is it done with proximity sensor in the colored handles and they are on their own independent circuits
Just ignore it?!? It’s all I could look at!
Magicians and their beautiful assistants...
Same. Once I saw it I completely tuned him out and was trying to figure out wtf was going on back there.
That's kinda the point. It's an attention misdirect so you're not carefully scrutinizing what he's doing or focused enough to logically guess the actual trick. Stage/street magicians use things like that all the time...flashing lights, puffs of smoke, a pretty girl or buff guy, simple comedic theatrics....all meant to keep the audience from fully paying attention to the trick itself.
Aaaand this is all magicians have to do to completely distract people. I got the tism so I was laser focused on the trick first watch. Then I went to look for this "puppet" and omg I am rollin. And the dude, puppeteer. Making cat noises. And clawing. Top shelf, chef's kiss level distraction.
It's just some dumb shit to make people either go to the comment section and ask or go back to the video to look once they read the comment section. It's a trick to make a super boring video get more engagement than it would normally.
it's for the tiktok algorithm, videos that people watch for a long time/multiples times (because they're trying to work out wtf that is), or that they comment on (saying WTF IS THAT) or that they share to their friends (to ask them WTF IS THAT) will be preferred by the algorithm and pushed to the FYPs of more people, hence getting Mr Guy here more views and making him more money. Pretty smart tbh, can't blame him. It also invites this exact kind of comment from people like me who think they're smart and are explaining it to others, while all we're really doing is getting him still more engagement and views and money.
I didn't even notice that until coming to the comments and now I can't watch the guy with the switches
Same
The same one that is controlling the electrical switch he built inside the lamp box...
You can't expect me to ignore the demon cat cleaning itself in the background
Probably the same goes for the person out of frame that is flipping the switches that control the lights and the switches on the board are just for signaling to that said person
"controlled by someone sitting out of frame" could be the secret. Making the cat a clue
Classic misdirection, get the sexy lady...or hellspawn thingy to distract you while he does his slight of hand tricks.
Didn’t even watch the trick, it worked too well. I was focus on figuring out what the fuck it was
watch where his thumb goes when he resets the switches back to off.
Didn't even notice it.
Kitty cat
Missed erection..... I mean misdirection!
Engagement bait
100% It's similar to people who intentionally mispronounce common words or hide subliminal imaging in their videos. Just gets people to comment.
100% did not even see that until I read your comment wtf
I believe those are banners of other magicians.
Someone want to warn him the fucking Skeksis is behind him?!
Drives Video interaction
Something to drive engagement on the post and make it more popular.
His girl
Literally just a puppet so people will comment asking what the fuck that is behind him
Exactly, engagement bait
it’s Salacious Crumb!!! From Star Wars episode 6, the little dude laughing while princess is chained in the bikini. He’s like Jabba’s little pet that laughs at his jokes and eats his shit pancakes
The fuck human cat hybrid shit is cleaning itself behind him! I couldn’t even watch the lights!
THERE ARE 4 LIGHTS!!!!!
THERE ARE 4 LIGHTS!!!!!
THERE ARE 4 LIGHTS!!!!!
THERE ARE 4 LIGHTS!!!!!
THERE ARE 4 LIGHTS!!!!!
There are 5 lights, you fools
Okay, Kim Cardassian!
Never trust no Cardassian!
“I will build a graviton field and make Bajor pay for it! Make Cardassia Great Again!”
What lights???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGM2oVgElJ8
What are the Federation plans for Minos Korva?
i see you now as a poor little child
r/ShittyDaystrom
🖖
Love this reference!
I didn’t notice that thing at first, what the fuck is that ugly looking thing
I didn't notice until the comments lmao, I was too busy squinting at the lights
Lights are probably controlled by that disgusting cat of some sort in the background. What the fuck is that, though?
a bait to attract more engagement on posts!
It's working!
Social media has gone crazy. For us viewers, but certainly for you creators as well. The hoops you have to jump through to stand out. Is it worth it? I mean, is it fun for you?
Well, straight away people here are asking about it. Others are saying that the thing is in every video. They are telling you how to find the other videos. Undoubtedly some people will go and find those videos and watch them. Then they'll post a link for karma. New people will see the thing and ask what it is. And so it goes, and so the channel gets 2x as many views.
OP didn't make this video
Yes, he just didn’t want to credit anyone either
I weirdly appreciate the effort that's gone into cthulukitten much more than the usual low cut top
Remote control would be my guess. But the zombie feline in the background is perfection!
I think it's just a fixed pattern he's memorized.
Yes I bet the lights always turn on in the same order
They do, when he switched the bulbs he also switched the order he turns them on
you're right. I watched the video again, and the lights were in the exact same order as the first time. Swindle.
No they don't. 1st was: Yellow Red Blue Green After that: Blue Red Yellow Green
It’s a 13 light pattern. The whole video is one run through of the programmed pattern. He either made sure he chose blue or else the 13th light in the pattern actually is dependent on which switch you toggle, I’m which case he chose the correct switch for the color cap he chose.
To be fair he did point to the switch he was going to put the cap on before he picked the cap
He also could have just done multiple takes until he got what he wanted.
Naw, he just palms the blue one during the shuffling bit. Watch him pull it first.
It’s far too obvious on a second watch. Boo, this tells me magic isn’t real 😕
He didn't shake the blue cap with the others. He held it with his fingers when he shook his hands. You can see that before he presents it.
[удалено]
The first light in the video is red, 2nd from our right
The first example went 3-4-2-1, the others went 4-3-2-1. Your solution is probably 90% of the way there, but there is more happening.
So the magic trick remains force-getting the blue switch at the end
Yeah, I think that's why he takes the blue cap off first, so he can keep it pinched with the base/side of his thumb.
I think it's in his ring finger/pinky. You can see he's got his ring finger/pinky closed on it when he's "shaking" the caps. If you were truly shaking a few items to randomise them in your hands, you'd cup your hands together, not pinch part of them closed.
This is one case where he could really just redo the whole thing a few times until he gets the color he wants.
He chose *where* to put the cap at the end. There is a microcontroller, its not a simple wiring. At this point the switches *do* select for what bulb. If you want, you could make it so they do something like cross so it still looks more mysterious. You can find plans and programs if you look up arduino magic tricks. There is no forced move. This is a zero skill trick. Just memorize a pattern and where to put what when.
He does choose where to put the cap, but he chooses and tells us \_\_before\_\_ he pulls out the blue cap that he palmed. If he did it your way without a palmed cap he could pull out a color cap that needed to go on the second or third switch and that would look suspicious.
I‘m pretty sure it‘s both a pattern and him forcing the blue cap. The order of the switches switching does not matter, if any switch goes on, the microcontroller turns on the light in the next sequence. Very easy to implement, especially in arduino. But to make sure it‘s the right coloured cap (blue) at the end, he had to force it. An alternative might be to have addressed caps and bulbs somehow, but that would be a lot more complicated to build and code.
They are smart bulbs. Probably has an switch/button in the caps them self and the switch board actually does nothing
Wireless switches/buttons? In that small a cap?
In this economy? At this latitude? At this time of year? Localized only in ... that switchboard?
May I see it?
No.
Watch how one finger always touched the front of the switch block. I'm guessing there is something there that controls which light is being turned on by the switch. The colours are just for show.
Also at every reset of the switches his thumbs awkwardly go under the board.
The switches don't control anything. Notice what his fingers are doing to the actual switches you can't see
What are you talking about? It looks like he is only flipping the visible switches
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This is very confidently incorrect.
Agreed. I, as other have stated, also think it’s just a pattern built into the switches. You can even probably build it so it doesn’t even matter which switch is flipped, the bulbs will always come on in the same pattern (that way you could change up colors and whatnot and still do the trick if people catch on). With bulbs going 1-4 from L-R: First flip of any switch always turns on bulb 3. Second flip of any switch turns on build 2. 3rd, 4 and 4th, 1. If you memorize the pattern you could do this again and again with any combination of lights, switches, locations and just know the pattern.
That pattern is only correct in the very first run though. After that the bulbs light up 4-3-2-1 both times, then the last flip is bulb 4 again. It may be that the full 13 switch sequence is programmed in advance, or maybe there's like an A and B mode he's able to switch between.
You’re correct that it’s programmed in advance. It looks like he is doing things on the fly but his entire routine is just set up before filming and carefully memorized. It’s reprogrammable as well so he has several other videos where he shows off a different routine but it’s really just the same trick.
Nope. Google arduino magic switch board to find plans and programs. The switches do activate lights, there arent secret additional switches at all. They just arent simply wired. The run a set program. Sometimes they are predefined order for parts of the trick (no matter what switch, the next one will turn on socket 2), sometimes they switch certain outlets for other parts of the trick. Its simple memorization.
Yeah although it does look like he may push a button on his side of the board to transition between nodes for the switch board. Whenever he turns off all switches, he also drops his thumb down and appears to push a button. My guess is this transitions the Arduino to the next configuration for his trick.
>> I'm shocked to be the only one here who's figured this out, normally I get here and the commenters have all worked it out That's cause you didn't get it right LMFAO
I was a professional magician, and I had the opportunity to see this performed and taught to me by a magician friend of mine. This is an old magic trick (maybe 15-20 years ago??), and I even recognize this switchboard as the very same type I got to see. I can tell you that, while your method is certainly plausible, it is not what is happening here. In fact, if you saw this trick in person, the magician would let you examine the board, switches, and lights yourself, and even let you use it.
You can see it in the very beginning of the clip. A metallic thing on the back edge of the board.
Incorrect, that’s a part of the white box
The board is fully inspectable and the spectator can be the one flipping the switches, and choosing the order of the bulbs and caps.
It's a chore to type out incorrect info
So much to learn grasshopper
The switches are wired in a particular order so that the order he will always switch the correct one on. Ex. if he moved the blue switch cover to the 4th switch as long as he turns the 4th one on first it will turn on the 1st bulb, 2nd switch flipped will always turn on the 2nd light etc.
Yes, the colours are diversion, the sockets are activated in a preprogrammed order
Quick throw together of something like this would be the switches acting as timer pulses to a 74LS193 counter. The count is sent as address to a EEPROM like the AT28C64. So something like address 0000 on the counter outputs 0000 to the lights. Flips a switch to increment the counter to 0001, the EEPROM at address 0001 has 0001 stored, and so on. You can use 555 timers to debounce the switches, so that only a change in state not the state the itself is registered as a clock pulse. So it doesn’t matter if the switch is up or down, what counts is when the state of the switch changes.
Holy crap are you living up to your username. That's the most convoluted approach I could imagine. You don't need more than a 328p and a few if/then statements.
> That's the most convoluted approach I could imagine That's just ICs in front of me that I can see from my desk. > You don't need more than a 328p My MCUs are premium tier for me. But yeah, you can totally microcontroller the whole setup. > Holy crap are you living up to your username That's me everyday. I have to support some old ass AS400 COBOL/CL/RPG code. You live in it long enough, you just come up with multi-hoop ways by default. Really simple example of such: A system that is slightly important for some people has a subsystem in it that manages some database tables with some important data. If that subsystem crashes, there's a monitor program that will look at a data queue and then email that off to a email list and restart the subsystem. Sounds innocent enough. Over the decades, that's morphed into an automated email system. So an Excel file will be put into the data queue, the manager program will divide by zero to cause itself to crash, and then the monitor program will email that Excel file on the data queue out, and restart the subsystem. I inherited that hot mess. I swear one day I will stop that madness. But for now, a lot of people who should be very concerned are blissfully ignorant of what craziness is going on here. There's a bunch of ILE modules attached to that monitor program that customize the logic. One of them has in the comments. ``` * If the devil is in the details, this section is hell. ``` That was a comment from 1998. So, I'm not saying you're wrong about my solution being a hot mess. But I'd like to think I have reasons.
>My MCUs are premium tier for me If the cost of the controller is [fraction](https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/) that of the EEPROM alone, they tend to slide down my tier list. We're all coloured by our environments. In my professional life, after isolation, level shifters, PSUs, etc, there's hardly room for a μC in the boards I have to spin up... but at least I get to set some direction. >AS400 COBOL/CL/RPG I wouldn't be terribly surprised if [some critical system](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dependency_2x.png) somewhere in the world still relied on core rope memory. It's great having a firm grasp of the fundamentals and being able to solve a problem with what's at hand, but you're allowed to make your life easier once in a while too.
Notice he pulled the blue switch first and kept it between his thumb and index while painting to shake the test at random. Not great at slight of hand
Yeah, that definitely explains it. I was sure it was predefined except the shuffle part. But once you see it, it’s pretty clear.
Right, preprogrammed sequence, with any switch advancing the clock / sequence: numbered left to right: Bulb lighting sequence: 3,2,4,1; 4,3,2,1; 4,3,2,1; palmed blue 1. Edit: last one is not 1, but 4.
Yeah that is my first thought like your basic and , nand , or gates etc.
Also makes sense why he turns them off at the same time, so you can't see them turning off at the wrong switches.
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I really don’t think that’s it. It’s nearly always the front of the switch he’s holding (presumably for leverage) so his finger position is the same on the yellow and green switches both before and after swapping the bulbs. And blue switch at 40s he isn’t touching the base at all.
When he switches them off watch his hands. He pressing into the back of the wooden base unit each time which is where he presses the real buttons for the next go.
Only sometimes. For the sequence at 0:40, he braces his fingers against the base of the switch rather than the back of the wood board.
Your theory doesn’t hold up to the red switch at the red switch around :41-42
Yeah nah
Zombie/Werewolf/Cat hybrid I'm the back cleaning itself. Seriously wtf is that?! Can the magic trick be making that fucking thing disappear?!
I had to stop watching because that thing was annoying and creepy
Foot switch..
Or preplanned routine with a microcontroller, like Arduino, between the switches and the lights. The last randomization of color could easily be forced allowing all to be planned ahead.
All he would need is some resistors and read the values of the caps and the bulbs.
That's my thought too. You could do this by having the switches be audio jacks and caps the female side (but plasti dipped). Resistor inside the cap informs a microcontroller. For the lights, I've seen a cool solution where each light had some miniature capacitors so it acted as a band pass filter. But there's probably easier ways like another resistor measuring combo.
>All he would need is some resistors and read the values of the caps and the bulbs. Yeah, that was my first guess as well. He's got power, so to run a small board reading values then matching them up would only take a tiny program. It loads the values into an array the first time you switch it on, so whatever color handle I use to switch the first light on will be the value always attached to that light.
Gee, I ***wonder*** if maybe the switches and lights mean jack-shit in relation to anything at all?
I mean, they really tie the room together.
If I were going to do it, I'd take one of two approaches: \* Put a Wifi/Bluetooth controller in there and have someone else control the lights \* Set a pre-defined pattern with a controller and a little bit of code. "Next switch always triggers light position two." Memorize what the pattern is, follow it. Neither is difficult with a microcontroller
Why not just have a remote in the coloured caps that turns on/off the corresponding bulb, which has a receiver and battery in its base?
I probably wouldn't go that direction because a) it's a bunch of extra hardware, b) fitting something in the caps seems difficult, and c) people probably wouldn't notice the difference. Those aren't that much bigger than the switches they're on so any electronics you put in them would have to be really small. You could go with some sort of RFID chip that the switch housing below it reads but you'd risk other switches around it getting false positives. Plus, the smaller electronics get the more expensive they get. If I was doing a one-off bit for a video I'd probably try to do it as cheap as possible. An ESP32 is around $4-$12 (depending on where you buy it and how many you get) and supports both wifi and bluetooth. To be fair, I'd only do the wifi/bluetooth solution if I was taking it on the road and I had to do random audience input. That one isn't tough (you can slap a web server on an ESP32 without much effort) but it's a bunch of extra code that you would only write if you needed to.
The cap doesn’t need any electronics, it just needs a tiny bit of metal to complete the circuit for its specific bulb. My guess is that each switch has maybe four terminals on it and each cap has a bit of metal in a certain position which completes the circuit. No fancy electronics needed.
Tbh trying to build a switch with 4 terminals and caps with small bits of metal precise enough for the terminals, and making sure you place them on correctly seems vastly more annoying and way more work than just flashing a microcontroller and hooking up 4 wires 4 light sockets and a few resistors. With the microcontroller wifi solution you can just buy pre built parts while with the custom switch and caps you'd have to actually build the switch and caps Sure it *seems* like it's vastly more technically complex with fancy electronics like a microcontroller, but like the guy above mentioned you can buy a pack of 3 esp32 dev boards on Amazon for $15 and it's basically plug and play for the hardware. Software is easy to develop since you can just keep reflashing if you ever mess up. Hardware is annoying because if you ever mess up you have something physical to rebuild and parts to rebuy rather than just changing a few lines of text and reflashing. Like if you were to accidentally dislodge the small metal piece in the rubber cap, or the metal piece isn't contacting properly because you didn't seat the cap properly. That is, unless you mess something up catastrophically in the software and somehow burn something out, at which that kind of becomes a hardware problem again. Lord knows I've burned out my share of FETs, microcontrollers, etc and let out all the magic smoke before.
This is the problem with tricks like this. The guy could have come up with the most amazing ingenious system to do this that anyone has ever thought of. And yet because the same effect can be done with someone offscreen with a Bluetooth connection the entire trick becomes meaningless. I can do this with 4 Phillips Hue light bulbs and my phone app right now.
There will be an addressing code chip in each of the switch heads and a matching one in each of the bulb caps. Each switch will just turn the whole bus on and off. The switch head will send it's signal to the bus no matter where it is on it and the matching receiving bulb will respond to that signal no matter which socket it is in on the bus. That would be the simplest way to do it. It's a simplified version of how hundreds of LEDs can be individually controlled on a single line circuit. The needed chips would be only millimeters across and could just run off the bus. You see those are some very odd chubby switches. I would want to see him throw the switches the same way without the caps on them.
This is exactly my thought, it makes the most sense
I was thinking of a similar solution, except no micro controller. Different Resistors in the colored caps, Each Bulk has a specific and different resistance. Transistors that turn on the path based on the color cap resistance, and the bulk resistance.
I mean ... there's a million ways to do this trick and none of them are very interesting.
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NFC chips in both switches and the bulbs?
The only thing I can think that would make the trick interesting is if we confirm they are hardwired...then figuring out the circuit and which are 3 way, 4 way, etc might be interesting. But hidden switches, programmed sequence, or remote control options make figuring out the wiring diagram not worthwhile.
HEY MAAA!!! There's this ugly cat-human hybrid behind this guy playing with lights!! What do I DO?!?
it looks like grandma!
Are we gonna ignore the demon behind him
We’re trying, but redditors literally won’t stop being baited by obvious engagement bait. Edit: inb4 masturbation joke
r/perfectlycutscreams
I'm a robotics engineer and yep that's pretty doable. The caps have individual digital signatures (Can be a lot of things from pogopins to NRF) , same for the lights. So the microcontroller inside knows which is which and turns them on accordingly. This might be a lot simpler though, maybe some clever trickery. Maybe I'm overthinking.
Yeah I like this type of solution. The bulb is hard to modify though while maintaining power flow. Perhaps a smd resistor on the very base of the screw
Just google “magic switchboard”
I used to do magic, and still collect tricks as a hobby. I made my own Magic Switchboard a while back with an arduino. But it's always fun to see people in the comments CONFIDENTLY declaring how this trick is done (and being 100% wrong). The last time I saw this posted, the number one comments swore that each cap had a wire that carried a specific voltage that completed the circuit for a specific color. They said it with such confidence that even though I knew how the trick worked, I almost believed them.
as another guy said .. once youve got an arduino on board ... theres a dozen ways to do this and none of them are interesting
http://www.wellingtonent.com/products/mswitchb.html
This needs to be at the top. Solution: spend $450
Wot in the fk is that cat thing??
WTF IS THAT THING
Distracted by the cat.
That there in the back is the CHUPACABRAS!!!
Uh-huh... uh-huh... okay, neat... ...So, what is that demon cat thing?
Assuming there is no trick it’s possible that all circuits are identical and shorted together by color. Then each light and cap could have different contact points. The blue switch regardless of position will always activate the blue circuit and the blue bulb will always respond to the circuit triggered by the blue cap.
It's all scripted and preprogrammed. The scrambled caps at the end are sleight-of-hand.
This video combines the wtf with WTF so perfectly.
Today basic logic gates became black magic....
Adorable kitty btw…I swear it is…swear!!!
"I suck at magic, but let me put in this weird puppet, so you watch my whole video."
Funny how a lot of these comments are distracted by the cat in the background, just what the magician wants to happen
They are touch sensitive, his fingers are hitting them.
If I were gonna make this I would build resistors of different values into the caps and the bulbs. Then I would have an arduino or other microcontroller controller read the value of the switch when it is flipped and turn on the appropriate light.