DiscoG X Workshop 9: Only One Way Out
- Jul 11
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 17
Workshop 9 of DiscoG X, our 10-week celebration of DiscoG's 10th anniversary, turned students into secret agents. The mission: crack a 4-bit digital lock and escape the room.
Only One Way Out was Workshop 9 / 10. You can see the full series here.
The mission
Students became junior field agents for the DiscoG Intelligence Bureau. A rogue hacker had locked the building behind a 4-bit encrypted security system, and the only way out was to understand it well enough to beat it.
The lock worked on binary. Every code was a number between 1 and 15, entered as a 4-bit binary value using four ON/OFF switches. Students learned how binary underpins every digital circuit, why a switch or GPIO pin can only ever be on or off, and how to convert a denary number into binary bit by bit, working through the place values of 8, 4, 2 and 1.
Once they'd cracked the logic, they turned to the physical system built to test it. Set the switches, press the button, and the lights tell you how close you are. Red means your guess is too high, yellow means too low, and green with a buzzer means you're in.
The tech behind the lock
Each lock ran on a Raspberry Pi Pico W, wired up with a 4-bit DIP switch, a push button, three LEDs, and a buzzer.
Students saw the full input-process-output pipeline in action: switches send a binary guess in, the Pico compares it to the secret code, and the LEDs and buzzer report back out.
They also learned about how to convert from denary to binary, and how this can be achieved using basic switches.
Built with help from a familiar face
Preparing for this workshop was a lot of work, but involved all the things Gerard and Kat love best... electronic engineering and designing 3D parts and boxes.
The circuits behind each lock were built and soldered with help from a former DiscoG student, now in Year 11, who had just finished her GCSE in Engineering. She helped connect the components and solder the circuits ahead of the workshop.
We'd offered her the work experience after seeing a project of hers that she'd been working on earlier in the year. It was a fantastic opportunity to put her Engineering skills to real use, and the workshop wouldn't have come together in the same way without her.
Playing the game
After writing some of the logic to make the game work, students took turns trying to crack their binary lock. Each guess started with the four switches, flipped up or down to set a binary number between 1 and 15, then submitted by pressing the button.
The lock replied with a light. If the guess was too high, the red LED turned on. If it was too low, the yellow LED turned on. If it was correct, the green LED lit up and the buzzer sounded for a few seconds to confirm the system was unlocked.
With those clues, students worked through each guess and narrowed in on the code, adjusting their switches up or down until the green light and buzzer told them they'd cracked it.
Join us this summer
DiscoG X is a short series of workshops for Years 5 to 9, but DiscoG Coding Academy runs weekly term-time classes during the academic year as well as Summer Holiday Bootcamps for students in Years 1 to 13.
Whatever stage your child is at, there is a place for them here.
Summer Bootcamps are intensive and hands-on, with Specialised Courses built around the same approach you've seen in this post. Spaces fill up quickly.
Not able to make summer? Register your interest for September term-time classes to be one of the first to hear when spaces open.
Any questions? Get in touch!
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