Thread: A lot has gone wrong this year...

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Just thought I'd share my frustrations to help me vent a little! Hopefully some you will find this humerous instead of boring!

Wow, what a crazy Halloween season so far. I took on a lot of projects the last 3 months and really increased the complexity of my animatronics with my first foray into servos and even the complexity in my static props with the cemetery gate and the witch shack. One thing that I have learned this year is that more complex your display gets, the more things can and will go wrong. Here's just a random sampling of things that gone wrong in the past 5 days:

Finished off the animated organ and put it out in my display. The next day the cam shaft got loose and it doesn't work anymore. Went to try and repair on Sunday only to find that the motor doesn't want to turn anymore. No idea on that one yet.

Was finishing programming the animation on my 3-axis witch Friday night when the jaw servo burned out, literally melting a hole in the back of the servo enclosure. Yikes. Servo #1 dead. I figure out the jaw is clinching a little bit so that must be what caused the servo to burn up. So I decided I didn't really need 3-axis head movement, so I replaced the jaw servo with the tilt servo, robbing my witch head of the ability to tilt. It can still nod, rotate, talk, and the eyes move side-to-side. I adjust the programming so the jaw doesn't close all the way.

Saturday morning I get the witch out in the witch shack and get all wired up and running. Working great for a couple of hours and then the jaw servo stops working again. Ugh. Servo #2 is now dead. Finally realize that the jaw portion of the latex mask is not as flexible as it should be and is causing strain on the servo. I make a run to the hobby store that is about 15 minutes away and buy a HiTech 625MB high-torque metal gear servo for $40. I swap out the jaw servo and completely detach the latex jaw from the rest of the latex mask. Witch is now talking great.

I also redo the stirring cauldron portion of the witch in an attempt to use a real stick for more realism. Epic fail. Too heavy, arms start falling over and the motor gets stuck. I will have to rebuild it, so for now I don't run the cauldron.

Saturday evening the witch head is running pretty good until 2 hours after darkness. I then notice the witch is no longer nodding. Servo #3 is now dead. I unplug this servo and let her continue talking with rotate still working and her eyes still moving side-to-side.

Later that evening that evening the main shaft for the witch head becomes loose and the head starts swinging the opposite direction of the rotation commands and the rotate arm reverses on itself and the rotate servo burns up. Servo #4 is now dead. Now I have talking and horizontal eye movement only.

Sunday morning I run out to the hobby store and buy 2 more of the $40 servos and I buy some servo extension wire to move the remote servo power box out of her head. I don't get around to installing anything because I have to work on other props, including building a prop for a friend. I let the witch talk Sunday night.

Last night I start working on the witch head and I discover that the gears inside the micro servo for the eye movement are stripped. Servo #5 is dead. I decide that the witch is just 2 front heavy and start looking for a way to redesign the jaw using lighter material. I end up failing completely and resort back to the old jaw design. I replace the nod and rotate servos and strip 3 of the new screws in the process because I can't get the right size holes in the Lexan because I have no drill bit that is exactly the right size. I give up in frustration and go to work on something else. When I get it all finished up, will she burn out the nod servo again? I don't know.

I get my light show hooked up with my 6 styrofoam pumpkins. I'm using Insteon modules along with my Light Show Master software, of which I am the author of. I get my 71 links programmed for the 6 channels and get a show running on one of the sequences I made last year. Go outside to take a look and notice that my moving spider stops moving whenever the lights are flashing! I guess those C7 bulbs are actually taking away too much juice from the circuit that it's causing interference with some of my motors. I have 1 20-amp circuit that everything is running off of. There is another outlet that is 15-amps that is unfortunately shared with half of my house. I dont' have anything plugged into it yet, but I guess I'll have to try to move some stuff over there. Ugh. I really need the electrical redone in my house but I can't afford it.

Head popper keeps popping off his crank arm at least once a night. I don't even care anymore and last night I didn't bother to fix him.

Flying crank ghost suddenly stopped working last night. Discovered that somehow the 5 RPM AC motor overheated. No idea how that happened as my ghost is lightweight and none of the strings were tangled and everything was liquid smooth. Fortunately after the motor cooled down, I was able to plug it in and it started right up. This never happened last year. Oh well.

Fortunately I'm not completely in the dumps because I have been getting a lot of satisfaction from the compliments people are giving me when they see my display, even if half the crap isn't working. Now I see the appeal of satic-only displays. lol...

I have other interesting stories, but that's all I have time for now. Hope you enjoyed my rant!

That would have diven lesser haunters to the nearest clock tower with a sniper rifle. The good news is that the ToT's didn't pay anything so they can't (rightfully) complain.

ugh, Halloween is supposed to be FUN and relaxing... I hate it when something like this turns to stress and frustration.

Im feeling the same way you are right now, except my prop failures and rebuilds are nothing compared to yours.

I think I learned something this year, I learned that if I want to start getting into more complex prop building, I either need to start in January OR limit myself to one new prop a year..

I wish I could actually follow through with my own advice.

ive been so busy building, fixing and stressing that ive missed the whole point to this.

Yeah, I hadn't even planned to do servos this year. I decided to do it in the middle of August. My wife and I were eating at Chili's and out of the blue, I said, "Honey... what if I were to put servos in the witch head and make her talk?" So we started talking about it and talking about how much it would cost to do and got her approval to do it. Well, 2 months later it's cost like 300% more than that original budget and it still isn't right. Haha... Kind of ironic.

The one thing that has REALLY gone well for me is my new VEI 935 fogger from MinionsWeb. I had ordered it in the middle of August and last week I was freaking out because it hadn't come yet. But it finally came on Thursday and it was worth the wait. I love this thing. I didn't even bother plumbing the fog. And the one surprising thing is I found that I'm actually using the wireless remote a lot. Didn't think I would have much use for it. I'm running my fog machine in "conservative" mode where it rarely triggers. I wait until somebody is looking at my stuff (because I'm usually in the garage fixing other crap) and then I hit the button in my pocket. Now on Friday and Saturday I'll have it running more often and I won't use the remote much then, but right now it's perfect.

WOW Xpendable. Glad I got to see the witch while she still had a lot of movement left. Sorry to hear about all the issues you're having.

I was gonna setup during fall break but Iv been sick the whole break. So I guess Im not going to be able to finish before halloween.

Hate you are having issues but glad I 'm not the only.I had to take apart my reaching reaper put the rubber band back on track-My witchs brew witch keeps getting stuck in mid motion-my wall wart for my singing elvis died(brand new from cowliaous store)-some of my ts has split(redo all next year with 3 inch foam)duct tape over them-hex quit working hubby had to operate on him.hopefully the luck will change!

Holy crapola! You know, I thought it would be kewl to do some props.. but I don't know if I would go to the extent you have. I like the idea of a couple ground breakers that maybe have blinking eyes or something, and I loved the prop of the dead dude that raises up behind a tombstone and such. That is really neat. I like the idea that the one guy did of the spider on his porch that moves at kids when they step on the pad. Maybe a prop that activates with movement, but nothing fancy. I am sorry you've had so much problems, but man, $40 x 3 servos... wow! That's an expensive prop. My most expensive is the fog machine and for the 2nd year in a row I've gotten a "semi" dud. At least this one works, just not nearly as powerful as it should be. Hoping VEI will straighten it out soon.

Hope you don't run into any more problems. Problem with all them scary props in my area would be most kids would be too scared to come up to my house.

You explain exactly why I haven't gotten into servos yet. That is a lot of money for one prop. So far, I haven't had that many things go wrong in one season, but usually there is at least one animatronic that becomes a static prop. I am glad to see that your wife at least semi-supports your efforts. My wife loves complaining that I spend all of my time on Halloween and that I waste my money. Of course, as soon as one of her friends wants to see the display, then it is neat and I should have done more and did it better (that lasts until her friends have seen the display).

Oh well, thanks for the vent. I'm sure that others out there that were having a problem are feeling better about their situation.

Hope everything gets fixed...remember, if you don't mention a problem, the neighbors won't notice it. You are doing more than probably the entire neighborhood put together and it is appreciated.

I feel your pain. I setup my mad scientist's lab to have a Dr. Shivers and a hacked Crystal Ball (the one with the same mask as Dr. Shivers) talking to each other. Their placement and interactions guide guests through the scene. So, to do this I need another prop controller. I don't have time to build one so I order a Pico-Boo. Looks good but it's audio is mono and I need stereo (one channel for each head). Fine. I modified a DVD player to run off an external trigger and made a 120v relay box to activate it (from one of the channels of the Pico-Boo). I make a full set of audio tracks, mix them and burn them out to CD. I hook it all up, program the Pico-Boo and everything works great. Awesome! A few days later the microphone input channel on Dr. Shivers dies. Drat. I switch to the aux input which is not as loud but it still works. Then the DVD player starts acting up. I troubleshoot it and it looks like noise from the unprotected mechanical relay is freaking it out. Ok, I can handle that. I buy a solid state opto-isolated relay and make a new trigger box. It works perfectly. I get everything running and shortly thereafter all the audio on Dr. Shivers dies and no amount of fiddling will get him back. So, I no longer have my scene the way it was designed, my Dr. Shivers is dead, I don't need the relay box I made, I don't need the DVD player I hacked and I don't need the audio tracks I spent a whole night making. Argh!

I just keep telling myself better now than on Halloween night!

Keep the faith baby!

Mike