with both feet and set out to make my grand Halloween
plans a reality. Having a garage full of tools and already
being handy with their use, I decided early on that I
wanted to make my props versus buying ready-made ones.
This way, I was confident in the quality of the build and if
anything did break, I’d know how it was built and would
be half way to getting it fixed.
I quickly discovered that building the props was the
easy part. More difficult and potentially much more
expensive would be figuring out how to control them.
There are many very good premade controllers on the
market and I tried a lot of them in the beginning, including
the Prop 1 from EFX-TEK and the PicoBoo from Fright
Props. Both are excellent companies that produce great
products and provide lots of help for setting up their
respective controllers. EFX-TEK’s online forum is fantastic
with plenty of knowledgeable members willing to help
with the necessary programming to get your controller up
and running.
Even though all of them did what they were
advertised to do, the cost was putting the brakes on my
prop building plans. I set out to see if there were any
alternatives, and soon discovered DIY microcontrollers.
Using microcontrollers required me to learn several
new skills and purchase additional tools. That alone was
incentive enough, because who doesn’t need a reason to
buy more tools? I’ve always been handy at building and
repairing things, but this was brand new territory. I don’t
have a programming or engineering background and
didn’t speak the language. I’d need to learn the uses for all
sorts of cool sounding components like resistors,
capacitors, op-amps, and potentiometers, as well as how
to design the controllers so they could be made into
printed circuit boards (PCBs). Refer to Figure 2.
PICAXE TO THE RESCUE
What I needed was an inexpensive and easy-to-understand system that I could learn through researching
on the Internet. I soon came upon the PICAXE which was
originally designed to introduce school kids to the world
of microcontrollers. I decided if they
could figure it out, I should be able
to as well. Like so many others, I
found it was perfect for my needs,
with plenty of power and features to
run all the props and scenes in my
haunt.
PICAXE chips come in a variety
of sizes to fit just about any project;
choose the one that best fits your
needs. The ones I find myself using
the most are the 08M2+, 14M2,
and the 18M2+. The chips come
preprogrammed with the necessary
firmware, and only require an inexpensive USB cable to
download programs. These are only about $22 from
RobotShop (see Resources). If you want a DIY version,
check out the July issue of Nuts & Volts for a tutorial
written by Tommy Tyler. (Nuts & Volts also has a bimonthly column dedicated to this microcontroller called
the PICAXE Primer.) You can build your own for almost a
portion of the cost, and gain the satisfaction that you did
it yourself.
EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL
The first PICAXE project I did was one put together by
a fellow Haunt Forum member (see Resources). This
forum has been my main inspiration and source of help as
I’ve traveled this spooky road. I was fortunate enough to
discover it when I started to build my haunt, and have
found a wealth of information and more ideas for props
than I’ll ever have time to build. Mike Langensiepen calls
his board the VLC (Very Low Cost) controller. It takes one
of the 08 prototyping boards and allows you to utilize
four pins. These boards are around $4 from RobotShop. I
have built several of these boards and they are still in use
in my haunt today (Figure 3).
Although these worked fine, I wanted a board that
was quicker and easier to build as I really don’t like having
to use jumper wires. That’s when I decided to learn how
September 2014 69
By Steve Koci
Post comments on this article and find any associated files and/or downloads at
www.nutsvolts.com/index.php?/magazine/article/september2014_Koci.
FIGURE 2. My first very
simple printed circuit
board project.
FIGURE 3. The PICAXE board that started it all for me: the VLC controller.
