Au revoir Paris - Made With Magic gone from Disneyland Paris

By khyizang, 28 September, 2016

RIP Made With MagicA startling discovery

Dang! 

Finally made it to Disneyland Paris.  I was looking forward to catching the evening show, Dreams!, and making some recordings of the Made With Magic codes.  To my surprise, Disneyland Paris no longer supports Made With Magic!  Apparently, they stopped a few months ago.  Just missed it.

I met up with a really nice cast member who looked around where the Infrared emitters used to be and he noted that almost all of them are now gone!  One was still visible, but it wasn't working.  Yep.  They're  done.

No trace of MWM merchandise could be found anywhere in the shops or kiosks.  Looking on the English website for Disneyland Paris, some MWM items are still listed but are all indicated to be sold out. 

Nor did I see many park-goers with MWM items.  The couple people I did see with MWM stuff appeared to be folks from the US that had come for the half marathon. 

Initial reactions

The most stunning aspect of all this is not that they no longer are including MWM support for a particular show, but that Disney is ready, willing and able to wipe all the Made With Magic tech and merchandise from any venue that doesn't measure up to their expectations.  A sobering realization.  One that makes me want to double down on my own efforts to make the entire package more appealing to folks thinking about splurging on an item and/or getting additional enjoyment from their goods once they drag them home and away from the parks.

To date, most of my efforts have focused upon interesting things that may be done to either personalize the Made With Magic merchandise or to reimagine it so that it fits in with existing home decor themes.  And, while both of those endeavors are fun and enjoyable, I've found that true integration within the home doesn't occur until there are means to easily control the light output such that they become simple, useful household lights/lamps. 

The hunt for a suitable controller platform

I've come to expect that I can control most household electronics using my smart phone.  Any other means of controlling household items is less attractive.  So I've started with the premise that a useful MWM controller needs to work with a smart phone.  It's also got to be cheap enough such that 'the tail isn't wagging the dog'.  In other words, we should be talking about a price tag appropriate for an accessory for a $25-$30 item.  Focusing on a smart phone as the interface means that the communication with the MWM items/controller will need to be wireless.

Some android phones are capable of serving as remotes and can send IR signals directly from the phone.   No additional hardware required.  This may be the cheapest route if you already own one of these phones.  @davee from doityourselfchristmas.com has come up with some Java code and published a library for folks with this setup.

ESP8266 to the rescue

Unfortunately, I don't own such a phone, so I had to search elsewhere for a suitable answer.  After dabbling with a variety of Arduinos, Raspberry Pi, and Bluetooth, I stumbled upon the NodeMCU ESP8266 modules and found what I was looking for.  Those modules are cheap, wifi-enabled, have 4MB of flash memory that may be partitioned into 1MB of program memory and 3MB of storage.  Plenty for storing MWM codes from various Disney shows.  Code exists to enable a simple webserver and websocket support.  Any browser that supports websockets should work.  I routinely use an iPhone and/or laptop running Firefox.  Both work.  The only exception I've run across is the Kindle tablet.  The Silk browser doesn't yet support websockets. 

The missing MWM code is easily filled in by coding using the Arduino IDE. So far,  I've been very happy/impressed with this platform.  A functional controller can be setup for $10-$15 dollars and doesn't require any soldering.  Nice.  I'm still working with the code to learn how to make it do all the things I want/expect it to do.  Once I get a handle on all that, I'll post a preliminary release for folks to evaluate. 

Preliminary Impressions

Having a convenient MWM controller has made quite a difference with how we look at and use our hacked MWM items.  On a recent trip, we took a hanging lantern with us and used it in our hotel room to liven the room up a bit during the early evening and then to serve as a night light after we went to bed.  That's just one quick example.  I can't wait to hear what other folks come up with once they start using these convenient little gizmos.  I'll bet there will be lots of good ideas that come up.