15 binary 4×4 grids cycle on a conveyor. 13 unique patterns, 2 blanks, and no confirmed decoding yet.
UnsolvedSetup: In the Boiler Room, 15 panels cycle upward on a vertical conveyor belt. Each panel is a 4×4 grid where tiles are either ON (warm/brown) or OFF (cool/blue-gray). The belt loops: grids 16-18 repeat grids 1-3. You can activate the conveyor to scroll through all panels.
Possible message structure: Treating blank panels 2 and 8 as spaces produces groups of 1 + 5 + 7 non-blank panels. This interpretation is separate from the recorded Small, Medium, and Large gaps, which do not create those same breaks.
Grid 6 is visually distinct: It has two mini-rectangle decorations on its conveyor bars that no other panel has. Whether they mark a sequence boundary is unknown.
Cell (0,0) is never lit: Across the complete 15-panel loop, the top-left cell is the only position that is never ON. It may be an orientation marker or reserved position, but chance has not been ruled out.
Cross-location format: The same 4×4 dimensions appear in 15+ locations, including tomb candle racks, underpass hallway walls, sanctum tunnel floors, classroom chairs, the garage gas tank, the attic box, and the darkroom cabinet. Shared dimensions are confirmed; a shared encoding system remains a theory. See Tomb Candles for the related catalogue.
Community status: Despite extensive discussion, data mining, and testing, no decoding has been confirmed. An external key from another 4×4 display is one of several active hypotheses.
This is one complete 15-panel loop, manually transcribed and cross-checked against the source images. Rows run top to bottom and columns left to right when viewed from the front. 1 marks a warm/red tile and 0 a cool/unlit tile. Each gap label describes the spacing immediately after that panel. The next three observed panels repeat grids 1-3.
Grid 1: [0,0,1,1] [0,1,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] gap=S ON=3 Grid 2: [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] gap=S ON=0 (blank) Grid 3: [0,0,0,0] [1,1,0,0] [1,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] gap=S ON=3 Grid 4: [0,0,0,0] [0,0,1,0] [0,0,1,0] [0,0,1,0] gap=L ON=3 Grid 5: [0,1,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,1] [0,0,0,0] gap=S ON=2 Grid 6: [0,0,0,0] [1,0,0,0] [1,0,1,0] [0,0,0,0] gap=S ON=3 ★ decorated Grid 7: [0,0,0,0] [0,0,1,0] [1,0,0,0] [0,0,1,0] gap=S ON=3 Grid 8: [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] gap=S ON=0 (blank) Grid 9: [0,0,0,0] [0,1,0,0] [0,1,0,0] [0,1,0,0] gap=M ON=3 Grid 10: [0,0,1,1] [0,0,0,1] [0,0,0,0] [1,0,0,0] gap=S ON=4 Grid 11: [0,0,0,0] [0,1,1,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] gap=S ON=2 Grid 12: [0,1,1,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,1] gap=S ON=3 Grid 13: [0,0,0,0] [1,0,0,0] [0,1,0,0] [0,0,0,0] gap=S ON=2 Grid 14: [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [1,0,0,0] gap=L ON=1 Grid 15: [0,0,0,0] [1,0,0,0] [0,0,0,0] [0,0,1,1] gap=M ON=3
The conveyor carries exactly 15 panels before looping. Grids 2 and 8 are completely blank (all OFF). The remaining 13 each have a unique pattern, with no two identical. Whether those patterns represent distinct characters remains unconfirmed.
Summing each coordinate across all 15 panels gives the 4×4 totals 0 2 3 2 / 4 4 3 1 / 3 2 2 1 / 2 1 3 2. Among the 16 cells, totals 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 occur 1, 3, 6, 4, and 2 times respectively. This 1-3-6-4-2 pattern could be intended as a substitution key for the values 0-4, although no independent clue or meaningful decode currently supports that interpretation.
If blank grids 2 and 8 are spaces, the sequence reads as one non-blank panel, then groups of five and seven. The recorded gap sizes do not independently support these breaks, and the non-blank panels have not been shown to represent letters.
The in-game artwork by Deny Revane (the Underpass drawing) includes these 4×4 grid patterns drawn accurately. This confirms that the artist deliberately reproduced the panels, but does not by itself establish an encoded message.
When grids 5-14 are summed, the cells lit at least twice form a descending staircase from top-right to bottom-left. The result is reproducible, but the subset and threshold were selected after inspecting the data, so its significance is unknown and it does not independently validate the transcription.
The grids can be read from the front and back of the boiler (looking up). When drafted with the garage open and conveyor running, the panels extend through the roof and are visible from outside the house. Both viewing angles show the same patterns.
Every Braille variant tested (standard 6-dot, 8-dot, inverted, flipped, shifted, sub-region extraction, negative space) all produce gibberish or unrecognized characters. The 4×4 grid doesn't cleanly divide into Braille cells.
Reading grids as 16-bit, 8-bit (paired rows), or 4-bit values produces non-ASCII or non-printable characters. Tried all 8 reading orientations (left-right, right-left, top-bottom, etc.). None produce valid text.
Applied Vigenère decryption using 9 thematic keywords (CASTLE, PRINCE, ARIES, MANTIS, BARON, etc.) to both binary values and position sums. None produce English text. The cipher likely requires a non-keyword key from elsewhere in-game.
Arranging all 15 grids into strips (horizontal, vertical, grouped by word) and checking for recognizable letter shapes produces nothing visible. The 4×4 resolution is too low for readable glyphs at any arrangement.
Mapping each grid to a letter via ON-count, position sum mod 26, XOR of positions, centroid direction, quadrant bits, connected components: all produce nonsense strings. No single mathematical property of the grid maps to English letters.
One player mapped the red dots on server cabinets in Blackbridge Grotto to binary/hex. It decoded to the first 3 sentences of "Never Gonna Give You Up." Confirmed developer rickroll, not a cipher key.
Found a new panel pattern or cipher clue? Report it here.
The Boiler panels and Tomb candles share a 4×4 format, while the candles visibly have lit, unlit, and absent states. A machine-readable transcription of the Tomb grids could be compared with the Boiler data under rotations, reflections, and state mappings. No positional correspondence or decryption rule has been demonstrated yet.
If each unique non-blank grid represents one letter and the two blanks are spaces, the result would be a 13-letter isogram in a 1 + 5 + 7 structure. No grid-to-letter mapping or independent plaintext constraint has been found, so candidate phrases remain unconstrained guesses.
Some community members suspect the panels are remnants of an incomplete puzzle and that future content could add a missing clue or interaction. No announced update has been shown to connect directly to the Boiler panels or Tomb candles.
The grid shapes could be letter forms from Eraja's constructed writing system. No matching 4×4 Erajan alphabet or repeated character correspondence has been identified.
The Underpass contains rivet patterns and 4×4 wall panels, and Deny Revane's drawing accurately reproduces Boiler panel details. A systematic transcription could test whether these locations encode related data. The proposed higher-base relationship has not been demonstrated.
The Boiler Room gate has vertical bars of varying lengths. They could indicate a reading order, column selection, or row priority, but no mapping from bar lengths to the panels has been found.
The panels extend through the roof while the conveyor runs, which may suggest a connection to another room or exterior mechanism. Tests with several duct configurations have not revealed a secondary effect.
Grid 6 is the only panel with two mini-rectangle decorations on its conveyor bars. These may mark a sequence boundary, although starting the known decoding methods at Grid 6 has not produced a readable result.
The panels visually resemble the lit and unlit semaphore arrays used by the Clacks in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. No direct reference or compatible Clacks encoding has been identified in-game.
These approaches have not produced a readable result from the current transcription. New data, a justified orientation, or an external key could make some worth revisiting.
Standard Braille (6-dot, 8-dot, all orientations)
Inverted Braille (OFF = raised)
Binary/ASCII (16-bit, 8-bit, 4-bit, all reading orders)
Morse code (from ON counts, gaps, positions)
Polybius / Tap code (tested key variants)
Semaphore flag positions
Vigenère with 9 game keywords
ON-count mapping (A=1, B=2...)
Position sum mod 26
XOR between consecutive grids
Visual pixel font (tested layouts)
Centroid angle/direction encoding
Quadrant bits (5-bit values)
Connected components classification
Row/column sum encoding
Matrix trace / diagonal reading
Monotonic ordering against candidate phrases
Shape rotation/symmetry mapping
Pigpen / grid-border encoding
Negative space / outline reading
Think you can crack the Boiler Room panels? Share your approach.
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