Thread: Prop controllers

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I had yet another idea for my haunted house and while making a parts list for building (yet) another prop controller I decided to look around and see what was available pre-made first. The PicoBoo seems very well regarded but the new Nerve Center from Monster Guts is also quite intriguing.

Does anyone that has used either one of these controllers care to comment on their pros and cons? Any others that I missed?

Thanks!

I have 3 picoboo 105's and love them. Super easy to use I will continue to go with them. Maybe upping to a boobox4 or boobox8 with a scaremaster eventually. There is a new FI-105 where you can have different scare sounds that cycle through up to 10 which is a pretty cool idea. Can't really see a negative, 10 amp on each outlet is plenty, 2 minutes recording time is enough. Maybe buying more because it is just to easy to program.

go with the picco boo the nerve center doesn't play background sounds

did you see the video that garageof evil has done with the nervecenter it played sound...i bought 2 of the nerve centers..i also have the pico boos that don't have sound at all ....

Originally Posted by OpenTrackRacer

I had yet another idea for my haunted house and while making a parts list for building (yet) another prop controller I decided to look around and see what was available pre-made first. The PicoBoo seems very well regarded but the new Nerve Center from Monster Guts is also quite intriguing.

Does anyone that has used either one of these controllers care to comment on their pros and cons? Any others that I missed?

Thanks!

I am in your same boat and I am leaning towards the Pico Boo myself. This year I only need 2 outputs, one for my corpse to sit up, and one to control the air jets . Having eight different programs for a prop that just sits up really will do me no good. I really like the fact that you can get a different sound each time it trips and the ambient track mode just means that is one less cd player or mp3 player I have to set up in the garage...

Okay, that's an important distinction... no ambient sound on the Nerve Center. I guess it depends on the prop whether that's important or not. For example, for my current props it would be useful for one but not the others. On the other hand, the Nerve Center has eight routines and the PicoBoo only has one. I think that ends up at the same trade-off... helpful for some props but not for others (right now, I would only need one routine for all off the props I have automated so it wouldn't be useful for me at all).

The plug and play aspect of the 105 is nice. Still, I'm pretty tempted to go with the 104 (or Nerve Center) for the added flexibility that the terminals offer. It means more work making up an AC adapter box but that's pretty simple. I don't like the exposed terminals at 110v but some tape can clear that up.

On the audio side, does anyone know if either the PicoBoo or Nerve Center actually records in stereo or are both channels mixed? That could be an important decider for me.

Thanks!

the new picco 104 and 105 have 2 sounds to cycle between check the site. I also have vsa and a dmx set up but its nice to be able to run a power cord to wherever and set up a stand alone prop. just add pico boo 104 lights prop and computer speekers and presto prop on your sidewalk. i use my main system for stuff on the porch or inside.

I could not agree more with Mark. The other thing to remember is companies are always expanding DMX devices, you can not go wrong once you learn how to program them... and whats best is being able to handle your whole haunt from the comfort of your laptop or desktop computer...

VSA and DMX are great but I think that's a hard comparison to make. There are a lot of other costs involved and a great deal more logistics (especially if you have haunt elements separated by several hundred feed like I do). It's worth looking at however... I did some searching for Medusa (tagged along with VSA and DMX) and didn't really find anything. Can you guys point me to something specific?

I think at this point I'm going to go with either the PicoBoo or Nerve Center for this project. It's something I can play with in the future as well and move around as needed. I just need to find out about the stereo audio question because that's become important for this particular prop.

Check my sig for a link to the halloweenforum post about Medusa. Oh... and it's $90, not $99

I don't have a site up, but if you check the post, I have links to a complete instruction manual, as well as a quickstart guide.

- Hook