Thread: Hearse sound, help needed

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So we are going to do a full size wagon hearse this season. The run down is as follows. Full size wagon hearse all dressed out. One the front where the horse would go we will have a ghost horse. 2 long aluminum arms will come off the front to some type of harness hook up. Then the reigns will go from the driver to the harness. There will be a loop track playing for the horse sound all the time. Then we will have our driver and in the back our coffin. The action will go like this. We will be using 2 hauntmaster timer controls linked together for the action. As our victim walks up and passes the motion sensor on the first timer our driver will start talking (cowalacious skull and board) He will say along the lines of " How dare you intrupt this funeral. Don't you know you can wake the dead. OH no what's that!" now his timer will stop shutting him down along with some lights. The next timer kicks in and up comes our skelly from the coffin. Also with smoke and lights. His sound will also be a loop track of some kind.
The problem i am having is how to get the driver track to start from the begining once the timer trips. He won't work on a loop track. (cowalacious skull and board) All the components used will be 110v. I am trying to keep it as simple as possable and not get into the relay thing. So i am here for suggestions.

All this could be done with Exorcist, if you rigged your PC with a 7.1 sound card and mixed your sounds to different channels you could connect your computer directly to the Cow Board, you could then have 8 sounds all linked to different trigger and timer events.

That would be great except for the fact that i will not be able to have a pc hook up. it all has to be self contained. just power in and air line. wish i had a spare pc to use.....

I would recommend you run the show using a Prop-1 controller and then have that trigger two cowulicious cards with eprom chips. You can trigger this Prop-1 using any off the shelf sensor and with the program, easily control the seq. of events and the sound bytes.

I posted some video of our hearse haunt last year. Just do a search for hearses.

Good Luck,
Graveyardmadness

If you want, I can email you our Prop-1 program for controlling our hearse. Send me a PM with your email address.

bonemanB,
The ISD chip in the driver's skull will reset to the beginning once the sound file has played. You probably don't want him to start talking again until the skelly has finished. You can use the T2 knob on the Haunt Master controller to set a reset delay, preventing the motion sensor from activating the controller until the entire sequence has run through, plus a bit more so the next victim has a chance to arrive. This assumes that the second HM controller is triggered by the first one (the hearse driver's controller). You only need a momentary trigger to start an ISD chip playback, but since your controllers switch AC you're probably doing something else to get the playback going.
Another way to trigger the sound for the skelly is to place a small snap switch (lever switch) so that it is closed by the motion of the rising skelly. If you're using a Cow playback board for the skelly, this will work well. The ISD's won't reset until they play out, so even if the switch is hit while the skelly is talking its OK. If you need more time for the moving parts to return home just add a bit of silent time to the end of the .wav file. That keeps the chip active and prevents retriggers.

"momentary trigger to start an ISD chip playback, but since your controllers switch AC you're probably doing something else to get the playback going."

thats just it. with 110v what could i use to trigger it that will tie in with the hauntmaster timmer?

You'll need an AC relay to do the dry trigger for the ISD playback. No worries - it's very easy to set up. The relay you need is at Radio Shack for a few bucks. Simply attach the AC cord coming out of the HM controller to the coil tabs on the relay. Attach one end the trigger wires to the Normally Open tabs on the relay and the other end to the trigger pins on the Cow board. Set the driver's HM controller to around 1 - 2 seconds. When the sensor is tripped, this will close the relay and start the driver talking. I can send you a drawing of the wiring if you need one.

holy cow...thanks for the drawing Otaku. i can't believe how simple that is. i have a tendency to over think things. Now if cows web site just had recorder player for sale. he is out.....

These guys have ISD recorder/player boards. The page doesn't say if they are in stock at this time.

http://evilusions.com/shop/product_i...roducts_id=445