Electric Chair!

**MattMacLean** · 11-03-2009,04:24 AM

This years major build for us was an electric chair! We wanted it to look old and weathered, also we wanted it to be cheap. Everything on the chair was donated to us except the belts which were 2$ each and the Army helmet which was 7$ (For the hat) which we cut down to the right size. So the total cost of the chair for us was about 17$, not bad if I do say so myself. Anyway here is the finished chair:

The chair is about 6 feet tall at it's highest point and this picture doesn't really do it justice.
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/6969/prop.jpg

This picture shows the chair with the actor strapped into the chair for the night, luckily he didn't have to use the washroom! When triggered by the switch located in the actors hand a deafening electrifying sound and a strobe light would start up as well. In the mean while the actor is violently shaking.
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/6...ctricchair.jpg

The electrical setup:
Initially the main problem was "How can we trigger a sound using an extension cord with a flip switch on it" We thought of burning a CD with the sound looping but there would be a delay while turning it on because it has to read the CD.

So this is how it was solved.

I hooked up my ipod to my radio transmitter and set the CD player to the radio frequency it was transmitting to. I then had the CD player, and strobe light plugged into the extension cord with the switch. So the ipod was constantly playing an electrocution sound effect but it was only heard when the power was connected to the CD player which was hooked up to large speakers hidden under the chair.

That's about it! Tell me what you think or how we could improve it!

Thanks,
Matt MacLean of MacLeans MadHouse

**the halloweenie** · 11-03-2009,05:59 PM

Damn, if that picture doesn't do it justice, I would love to see it in real life. For $17 that makes it even more great. If I saw that at a store for $75 I would jump to buy it. Very good job, Well worth the money

**MattMacLean** · 11-04-2009,03:51 AM

Well the wood and the flexible metal cable aren't cheap, I was lucky enough to know someone who's deck fell down in a hurricane and had left over wood, and my boss had some flexible metal cable lying around at work.