Maker Recreates Ferris Bueller's Legendary Intercom

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is one of the most iconic movies of the 1980s. The film focuses on the hijinks of the titular Ferris Bueller, portrayed by Matthew Broderick, as he skips school for a day. In classic John Hughes fashion, the movie is really about the experiences of teenagers coming of age. But some of the most memorable scenes feature Ferris's wacky and creative attempts to avoid detection while he plays hooky. Of those, the automated intercom that temporarily fools the villainous Dean of Students, Edward R. Rooney, is one of the most noteworthy. In honor of the movie's 35th birthday, Aaron Newcomb recreated that legendary intercom.

Newcomb's YouTube channel, Retro Hack Shack, tends to focus on vintage computers and video game consoles. But this project is a worthy detour from that theme. In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the intercom plays a series of pre-recorded messages whenever a visitor presses the button. Building a device like this in the '80s would have been very difficult, but today we have technology that makes the job a lot more approachable. At its heart, the intercom just needs to detect a button press and then play an audio clip in response. Newcomb also wanted the device to sound a chime inside of his home, like a regular doorbell would.

To kick the project off, Newcomb purchased a vintage NuTone intercom unit that looks a lot like the model seen in the movie. That already had a speaker and a button, but Newcomb needed a way to play audio files on demand. To achieve that, he used an ESP32 development board paired with a DFRobot DFPlayer Mini MP3 player. The latter has an SD card loaded up with the same audio clips that Ferris plays in the movie. Newcomb originally planned to power the intercom with a battery, but decided that he didn't want to have to recharge the battery every week or two. Instead, he mounted the intercom to an outside wall shared with the garage. That let him run power from the garage, through the wall, and to the intercom. Finally, he used ESP-NOW software to communicate with a second ESP32 board that controls the doorbell chime inside of the house.

This is a silly project and is likely to confuse some of Newcomb's younger visitors, but it is sure to make Ferris Bueller fans happy.