Thread: cannon smoke and sound

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Hi all !

I am doing a pirate ship haunt this year and I am in the middle of making the cannon. I have the l.e.d.'s rigged and a motion sensor to fire them. I built the pnumatic / mineral oil smoke machine from another post and was surprised at how well it worked! However, my origonal plan for the release of the smoke was to use a sprinkler valve and it requires WAY to much pressure to work. I am stuck on how to get a short burst of smoke to release.

My other problem is the cannon sound. I tried to do it on the cheap by using a "record your own greating card" and hooking the speaker output to a mic jack to amplify it. This worked, Kind of, but the sound quality of the recording is lame and i still cant get a solid result with the trigger of the sound.

Any tips or info would be appreciated. Ill post pics later.

Thanks, Calvin

Were you using the sprinkler valve like a solenoid?

You know what you could do is hook up a powered sub-woofer, pump fog into the sub-woofer box, and when you play the cannon sound the sub-woofer will push the fog out.

Or you could figure out some other sort of bellows system to move large bursts of air.

And of course there is always the air cannon...



It sounds like a theme here that people are having a lot of trouble with sound quality of looping sound effects, is this right??

Yes I was using a the sprinkler valve for the selonoid. But the sub woofer idea has merit too. But triggering the sound is still an issue. And getting the LEDs in syncro.

Calvin,

I made some cannons several years ago that turned out pretty well. They had smoke machines blowing into the back of the PVC barrel, along with a flexible copper pipe feeding compressed air (switched by a solenoid valve).

To get the sound, light, and smoke sync'd, I made a circuit board that would turn on relays (one for smoke, one for air blast/light) based on trigger frequencies I recorded onto a CD. So, on one track, I had the cannon noise (connected to speakers), and on the other, I had the high-pitched trigger frequencies (connected to the circuit board).

I think you could probably pull off the same effect using a light organ kit and some relays.

- Hook

That's where a Fright Ideas Pica-Boo 104 http://www.frightideas.com/controlle...o-fi-104s.html would come into play....Record the explosion sound into it....You may want a little silence in the audio track before the actual "boom" sound so as to give a few seconds delay to shoot smoke into the chamber first....Wire the smoke machine remote to the first relay #1 output and wire the solenoid/ LEDs lights to channel 2....As soon as you start recording the animation press #1 to blow some smoke into the chamber and then quickly press #2 when you hear the boom to activate the solenoid and lights......That's probably not going to work with your home made fogger and you need to understand AC and DC voltage to hook the relays up right but that's how I would do it....I would also highly recommend using their PIR because they work very well with their unit so you don't have alot of futzing around trying to get that to work too.....Good Luck...ZR

Calvin,

Go to EFX-Tek.com, and check out their products. They sell electronics designed for home haunters, and provide excellent support and help. You might want to post your question on their forum. I think you'll find they can help you out.

Thanks,
Affine

Just found this... might be worth a look. You could hook up (3) 120V relays to the outputs, and control each relay with low, med, high frequencies on one channel of your audio track. The only liability that comes to mind, though, is that the relays might buzz with the sound.

Calvin,
Just curious - you're not using an off-the-rack fog machine for this effect, correct? If you are, you could cut in a 110VAC DPDT relay in series with the timer output. When the fog timer triggers the fogger, the relay will activate. Set the timer to a short (1-2 sec) burst, or however long is required to get the fog out of the end of the cannon. Use the relay to trigger the audio and LEDs. The downside is that this system is dependent on when the fogger is warmed up and ready to deliver a fog burst.
Doing fog-on-demand is difficult at best unless you use some sort of reservoir to store some fog until you need it. Unless you're usng a continuous fogger, of course.

I wasn't planing on using an off the rack fog machine in the begining, but I am currently in testing of a new model based on the earlier post about using a sub woofer to create a pulse into a storage chamber thus timing the smoke and sound effects perfectly and then using a "flap" to (A) inhibit smoke from leaking into the cannon chamber while not firing. and (B) activate the LEDs in syncro as well. if it works I will post pics! cross your fingers for me.

Thank you all by the way for your input, and please keep it comming. I love this site and its people! you are all so great.