Skip to main content
DEJA.jsDEJA.js
Sign up

🎟️ Guest Mode

Guest mode turns a visit to your layout into a little adventure. Visitors scan your guest QR code, pick a fun name and type the Room Code shown on your display. From then on they can explore your layout's stops, switch the effects you allow, and hunt for hidden eggs, all from their phone. They don't need an account.

Guest mode is rolling out behind the guestMode feature flag, so it may not appear on your layout yet.

What guests see

Joining

Joining as a guest

Guests get a generated railroad name such as Connie Conductor, Eddy Engineer or Yuri Yardmaster. Tap the card to shuffle it. They type the 2-digit Room Code from your display and tap Punch my ticket. A guest pass lasts 24 hours.

The yard

The yard home screen

Home is a little rail yard, and each track leads somewhere:

  • Explore shows your intro and offers Scan a sign.
  • Effects has your favourite effects ready to switch.
  • Egg hunt joins the hunt.

Tap Open and the train drives off its spur to that page.

Getting around

The guest menu

Every page has a track. The train pulls a car for each page: Home, Explore, Effects and Hunt, with the car for the current page glowing. Tap a car and the train pulls off to the right, the next page slides in, and the train rolls in on its track. The ☰ menu at the top right gets to the same places.

Explore

Explore — scan a sign, the map, and the stops

Explore is a menu of your layout's stops. Guests can:

  • Scan a sign: point the camera at one of your printed stop or effect signs.
  • Tap a spot on the map: every stop with a pin shows on your layout map.
  • Pick from the list of all the stops.

A stop

A stop page

Each stop shows only what you filled in:

  • a photo or two, and a Listen voice-over
  • The story, with a toggle between the tall tale (made up, for fun) and the real deal (the real history)
  • Track talk: quick facts plus a note on what to watch for
  • Watch: YouTube, Vimeo or uploaded videos
  • Under the hood: the DEJA devices and wiring behind the stop, for the grown-ups
  • Make it happen here: the stop's effects
  • Next stop

Effects

The effects map

Every effect you allow appears as a card along a little map. Each effect also has its own page with one big switch. That page is where an effect's QR sign leads, so you can put a sign right next to the thing it controls.

One effect, one big switch

Egg hunt

The egg hunt cave

The hunt takes place in a cave. The eggs sit at random spots, the same for everyone on the hunt. Tap an egg to see its hints, then Found it! when you spot the real thing on the layout. Find them all for a golden ticket and an air-horn send-off. See Easter Egg Hunts for setting up hunts.

Setting it up: the Guests page

Owners set everything up on Guests in Throttle (/guests). The page has four tabs.

Settings

  • Allow Guests turns guest mode on for your layout. The Guest QR, Print guest poster and Open guest view live here.
  • Room Code is the same code members use. Guests always need it, so generate one first.
  • What guests see switches Explore, Effects and Egg hunt on or off. A module you turn off disappears from the guest app, and its actions are refused.
  • Welcome sets the intro text and an optional photo at the top of Explore. It falls back to your layout description.

Effects

  • Guest effects lets you choose which effects guests may switch. Track power and frogs can never be guest effects.
  • Favourites are up to 6 effects that show first on the yard's Effects card.
  • Signs: every guest effect has a QR sign. Print signs prints them all, or print one from its QR button.

Explore

  • Stops: add, edit, reorder and delete. Only the name is required, and anything you leave blank simply isn't shown. A stop can have photos (the first is the big one), a teaser, the tall tale and the real deal, track talk, an under-the-hood section (built from your DEJA devices, plus your own notes), its effects, a voice-over, and videos.
  • Voice-over and videos: upload audio (MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV or WebM, up to 25 MB) or video (MP4, WebM or MOV, up to 200 MB), or paste a link. YouTube and Vimeo links play inside the guest app.
  • Map: copy the ready-made AI prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, together with a photo or track plan of your layout. Upload the picture it makes, then pick a stop and tap the map to drop its pin.
  • Print signs prints a numbered QR sign for every stop. A guest who scans one with their phone camera joins and lands right on that stop.

Hunts

Create and run egg hunts. See Easter Egg Hunts.

Related Pages