Ouija board—a classic staple of college dorm rooms and late-night gatherings! Many of us remember the thrill of gathering friends, turning off the lights, and asking the board questions with a mix of excitement and scepticism. Whether you believed in its mysterious messages or saw it as a fun group game, the Ouija board was a memorable part of student life for many. Now, thanks to some creative tinkering, the ESP32-S3 Wireless Ouija Board brings a modern, tech-infused twist. Reddit user rkelly155 from factorem.io is behind this one little game. The Wireless Ouija board can be controlled from a smart phone which makes it easier to deliver the mystery message to the players. The top of the Ouija board is made with laser engraving. Inside the board, there is a 5-bar linkage mechanism connected to two stepper motors, to control the pointer piece with a magnetic coupled pointer steering technique.
The main control board itself looks very simple and has an ESP32-S3 module, two stepper motor driver ICs, some complimentary components and an LDO. The stepper motors seem to be a five-wire unipolar stepper motor, and most likely to be a 28BYJ-48 or similar. From that, we can also assume that the stepper motor drivers are probably the ULN2003 Darlington array chip. The linkage mechanism seems to be made from 3D-printed parts along with needed bearings.
For controlling the board they are using web-based controls with WebSocket to send data to the control board. ESP32-S3 creates a Soft AP and hosts a Server with a webpage on it. The user connects to the AP and navigates to the webpage. Webpage contains a stylized qwerty keyboard with buttons Whenever we press a letter on the control web page, it will send corresponding data to the ESP32-S3 SoC. The ESP32-S3 then finds the XY position of the letter using a lookup table. Once the XY position is acquired, it is then converted into angles, so that it can be used to control the two stepper motors to move the pointer to the appropriate location. If you are interested in this project you can get more information about the project on the Wijiboard product page.
