Thread: Need help with relay for fog cannon

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I am trying to build a pirate cannon which will 1) start fog machine, 2) create a puff of air, 3) turn on a LED, and 4) play a mp3 of a cannon sound effect all by preprogramming. I am brand new to all of this and I have looked and examples here and on You Tube, but I have not found a REALLY basic answer on how to make it all work together. I have gathered up a SSC-32 board and some servos for skulls, but cannot find the info on what to use for this. Thanks for any and all help

You may be able to use the fogger as the controller for all this, unless you want to fire the cannon on demand. Then you need to have some way of knowing that the fogger is ready to produce fog before you hit the trigger - that's a whole different can of worms.
I don't do a pirate-themed haunt, but I thought of this trick a while back. Wire a 110VAC DPDT relay in series with the fogger pump, so that the relay is activated when the pump cycles. Use a short fog cycle on your timer, like 2 secs on, 30 secs off, to help keep the fogger hot so that there aren't any long reheat times. Use the relay to send power to the LEDs and trigger the MP3 player.
I'll be pulling my foggers out of storage for testing soon, and I plan to wire one with a relay to test this concept. I'll post results when I have them.
If you're comfy with splicing in the relay, this might work for you. The downside is that the cannon only fires when the fogger is ready. The upside is that you always will get fog when the cannon fires. Oh, and welcome to the forum!

This guy:
$30 Pirate Cannon - Complete!
did a really nice cannon design.

TY for your quick responce. Is there a tutorial on DPDT relay or can you suggest one that would work. I have NO electrical knowledge, so big learning curve here. I have seen the $30 Pirate Cannon before, but all it lists is "relay...$9.00". I would like to set this up to be activated by VSA. I know I have bitten off a lot but I have what ...108 days. Trying to do 3axis skulls at the same time. Yikes!

Here's a relay that will work:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=2049721

Just use spade connectors to attach the wires. It would be wired in series with the pump so that it activates when the fogger is triggered. The LEDs would be on for the same length of time as the fogger pump. What model fogger do you have, and does it have a timer?
Using VSA might mean that you'll need a way to tell the program when the fogger is ready to go. The above relay would probably not work with VSA - you may need a PWM relay. The concept behind the system I described is to let the fogger be the controller.