2 HN users recommended this commentary2 months2022–2024score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Makers recommend it as a behind-the-scenes look at crunch-time hardware engineering for a big YouTube production.
William Osman describes helping build parts of the MrBeast Squid Game event, including hacking together hundreds of wifi-controlled blood packs in about three weeks. He covers the chaos and near-failures along the way.
“the making off video of his squid game blood packs is really interesting from a maker perspective” (HN, 2024)
2 recommendations · 1 citations · Commentary · news from the time
I'm not really interested in Mr. Beast's content but there is a video from one of the engineers involved in his Squid Game recreation that I thought was pretty interesting. Seems like this guy went for three whole weeks without sleeping, just piling on hack after hack to make the event come together. [this video]
Engineer's account of hacking together MrBeast's Squid Game event in three weeks
IMO a lot more interesting story around mr beast: If you have a bit of patience, while very much annoying, the making off video of his squid game blood packs is really interesting from a maker perspective. > How I Almost Ruined MrBeast Squid Game [this video] or 7:30 if you know what a squib is They had 3 weeks (yes) to get 500 wifi controlled bloodpacks. And went through all stages of development hell. After technical problems, regulatory problems, supply chain problems, manufacturing problems and last but not least the obvious integration problems it started a day late (+500k$ for MrBeast) because the team with the targeting software had shit latency and drained their batteries prematurely. In the end they still added cgi for a better videoflow and used thin yellow paint to not get demonetized. Again, worth the pain of watching it. Turn down the sound a bit and stay strong. Skip forward if need be He also had an interview later once you are through with the video. > The TRUTH Behind Mr Beast's Squid Game Video [link]
Making-of the blood packs: 500 wifi bloodpacks in 3 weeks, development hell
It's pretty amusing how a bunch of teams are posting videos on how they built a specific, bespoke hardware/software component or two of MrBeast videos. This one was about the ~100 hardware button sets and LED strips required for the video. And here is another one [1] that is on how another team build 456 "detonator units" for the Squid Game video: also finished in the nick of time. It seems clever for MrBeast to hire DIY YouTubers to do these bespoke jobs: it's a win-win even after the video, as they teams create their own "how we built this" video. [1] [this video]
Team building 456 detonator units for the Squid Game video
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