Thread: Lighnting machine help please??

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I could make one when i get home, but I have 4 hours in the office left I want halloween to be here Im so ready lol

I got mine direct from Halloween Express and like I said it arrived all smashed up (inside), looked perfect outside. I'm thinking the manufacturer, Morris Inc, either has real quality control - manufacturing issues, OR ...someone on the line deliberately damaging product. Anyway I'll never buy from them again.

I guess I really don't get it. Some people insist on not paying a penny more than 20 dollars for a lightning controller, but when they receive their box full of busted junk, will risk life and limb playing with dangerous electrical components and circuitry that they know absolutely nothing about. They'll pay hard earned cash for soldering guns and electronic parts they think might work even though they don't know what any of them are for or what they do. Others will buy 5-10 of the cheap 20 dollar lightning controllers so they have extras when they crap out on them. Hopefully, they won't burn the house down or electrocute someone in the process.

I know how tough this economy is. I recommend that if you only have 20 dollars to spend, buy a mask or prop or something you don't have to rebuild as soon as you get it or have to become a electronic engineer to try to fix what was, in all likelihood, a piece of junk to begin with. Save up for a professionally made lightning controller and get it later.

My company i-Zombie Productions, as well as my competitor Lights Alive, both make professionally designed and built Thunder/Lightning controllers. They were designed by electronic engineers to handle more wattage than 99% of the haunters out there will ever use. In the rare case of a malfunction, you will have someone who knows what they are doing effect the repair and get you back in business in a very short time.

A well designed lightning controller is a fairly complex electronic device. I am not talking about a simple light or color organ circuit. If I could build a lightning controller that worked as good as, was as safe as and was as reliable as the i-Zombie line of controllers, and could make it for 10-20 bucks. Yeah, I could run Lights Alive out of business. Trouble is, it just can't be done. When you give up quality, safety and reliability for a low price tag, you end up with the kind of stuff most of this thread was about.

Originally Posted by i-Zombie

A well designed lightning controller is a fairly complex electronic device. I am not talking about a simple light or color organ circuit. If I could build a lightning controller that worked as good as, was as safe as and was as reliable as the i-Zombie line of controllers, and could make it for 10-20 bucks. Yeah, I could run Lights Alive out of business. Trouble is, it just can't be done. When you give up quality, safety and reliability for a low price tag, you end up with the kind of stuff most of this thread was about.

Well said.

I'll second what i-Zombie said. (Except the part about running us out of business. LOL.) Both of us make well-designed, safe, solid, American-built products. You buy overseas junk cheap, and you get what you pay for.

Just for the sake of comparison, since there are photos of the inside of the "Perfect Storm" in this thread,
here's the interior of our FireFly 501.

Unfortunately, most electronic items are sourced from China now due to the low cost. Quality control is the pits most of the time. You can get a good batch of items one run, and pure junk the next. That's why you see vendors from the States actually travel to the Chinese factories to verify the quality of the products they are trying to build. You can get good products from China, but sometimes it takes so much work it's not worth it.

In the grand scheme of things, the price of the i-Zombe, LightsAlive, or FrightIdeas' PicoFX units is not that bad. Remember, home haunters are not really the main target of these products. So in that light, they are very affordable and designed to last. If you are wanting to run that many lights, then your show has grown past the cheap $20 items and you need to actually invest in something that will last and produce the goods.

Plus, there are other ways to produce the lighting effect you want. Especially if you are talking about converting everything to LED lights. You can use DMX or Light O Rama systems to control just about any light with a PC or DMX console. Incandescent lights are on the way out people. The government is forcing us all to go to CFL and the incandescent light will be pulled off the market. Sure, you will still see expensive specialty bulbs, but they will probably be even more expensive now.

It all comes down to how much is your time worth? You can roll the die and hope to get by with a cheap product, or buy piece of mind on a quality product that actually comes with a real warranty.

I would rather save up for these other units, or build something on my own. I would only build because I like to tinker, not because I think I can do a better or cheaper version.