Thread: Saw a real nice haunt... and got great advice

Tweet

I was told by my Father-In-Law about a yard haunt with pneumatic props, FCG's holograghics, and all kinds of stuff.

Beings new to yard haunts, I went over and looked at his display...It was pretty good. I have only seen a lot of this stuff on the internet, so seeing it actually being used here was pretty cool.

The guy actually came out and we talked for probably 45 minutes and all. He showed me everything. How he wired his FCG with a ceiling fan motor, His coffin pop-up with a screen door closer and a lawn chair, how he wired his electric chair with a drill and egg-beater and his holographic tv.

Gave me a lot of advice, and got me believing that I could actually do a decent yard haunt without breaking the bank.

He had everything wired remotely with the X10... I have read a little about this, but I'm hoping that it is pretty simple to do too...

I've been looking and wondering how to make all this stuff, pneumatics and stuff, but I didn't want to spend all kinds of loot on metal framing, welding and all...at least now I have a friendly neighbor who I could get some advice from...

Just thought it was cool how helpful he was.. can't wait til next year now..

Awesome. Cool of him to show you the know-how. As like you currently i don't have much of the technical side of the haunts nor the time to learn sadly.

oh x10...i have my whole house wired with that

Is X10 hard to put together or pretty user friendly?

X10 is VERY easy and inexpensive, too. Unfortunately, it's also VERY slow. It doesn't do overlapping commands, so it's basically "send the signal...wait...send the next signal." I have my whole house wired in X10, and can tell you that it's not 100% reliable, either. Sometimes the sockets/switches miss commands meant for them, leaving lights on or off. When the electric company did some wiring at the street, half of my house refused to take commands from the other half, requiring a special x10 bridge to be inserted. The switches go bad over time, sometimes refusing to turn on or off by node number, but accepting the on/off for all nodes commands.

X10 is most appropriate for stuff that can wait 1-2 seconds to be triggered. I use it to turn on the low voltage lights and other stuff that will be on the whole night.

X10 is not appropriate if you need exact timing, such as synchronizing music to lighting or skull movements to speech.