[t_mann]

> I was told that I had the second biggest crowd, second only to a Pokémon bean bag game (which did look pretty cool). Some adults were curious, but most importantly, a handful of questions from kids who wanted to know how I built it. It was especially rewarding to show one off one of the extra targets I brought. One kid even recognized the ESP32 chips and said, “Oh, these are the ones you can make drones out of!”

That paragraph really stood out to me. Apparently, where OP lives, people casually make stuff even cooler than a laser shooting game for a one-off school event, and elementary-school-age kids recognize specific types of microcontrollers.

[bragr]

1 out of 115 kids recognizing a microcontroller doesn't seem that surprising considering many kids play with little electronics kits these days.

[mock-possum]

Plus kids follow makers on social media and video sites.

[statico]

Part of me wants to say, "Well, that's Silicon Valley for you," but I'm confident there are many other places you could say something similar about.

Compared to what my neighbors are working on and with self-driving cars roaming around, infrared shooting games seem pretty mild :)