Lights/Sound Effects Triggering

[Darkness incarnate]

I need some help. One of the rooms in our haunt this year requires some special effects that I'm not sure how to implement.
This room will be a small circular hub with candles mounted on walls. An actor will need to be able to press a button and trigger a sound effect. As soon as said sound effect is over, the candles on the walls need to go out. After about 4 seconds, they need to come back on in red. Another 4 seconds or so, another sound effect will play and a set of strobe lights will go off.
We're on a relatively small budget and I don't want to get into equipment that requires computer controls.
Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

[N2SPOOKINU]

Frightprops is your answer. Easy to program and set up. Top notch customer service and instructions. Boo boxes and boo box flex are awesome for easy stuff like this.
Greg

[drfrightner]

Actually you should order those directly at Fright Idea's ... when you work directly with that company they help you, give you great insight.

I always go direct!!!!!

https://www.frightideas.com/

But to answer your question there are many companies that do this that help you trigger audio I just like working with Fright Idea's.

Larry

[morte615]

Many ways to do this depending on your budget and skill level.

For a high budget, high reliability, low maintence side I would look at Gilderfluke or Alcorn McBride. That is the hardware the big boys (as in Disney, Universal, ect) use. Lot's of customization so you can use it pretty much however you want, but it's a bit more than point and click programming because of that. It's expensive but there is a reason that they keep going back to it. It's rock solid and can be left unattended for decades (I'm not lying about decades either, Disney has some products that have been running non-stop since 1982, probably older than that also!) Also their customer service is usually pretty good if something does go wrong.

For Medium Budget, Medium Reliability, and Medium maintence look at the Fright Ideas Boo series. Easy to program, but you are limited to some simple programs, and can't really add sensors or triggers unless you add another box. As for reliability the larger haunts and even some amusement parks use the hardware so it's pretty reliable, but it's a crap shoot. I've worked in places where we had 3 Boo Box Flex, 2 of them were needing constant attention, and one we didn't touch for 4 years, and then only to update the prop it was controlling. Price is a lot more reasonable but still over $100 and since you are so limited you may need more than one.

Cheapest option with probably the highest customization (and skill level) would be an Arduino, BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, ect. If you can program it you can do anything you want with it. There is a large online community around each one so finding help to do a project is super simple. The prices cn range from $10 up through $100 depending on the triggers and sensors that are needed. But luckily adding to one later is super CHEAP, though may not be simple. As for reliability it's mostly determined by your skill at programming and soldering. Some people have lots of problems and others will run a system for years without ever touching it. I use Raspberry Pi with custom software as my triggerable video players just because they are so cheap and I have been running them for 4 and 5 years now without any issue. But I have seen Pi's that die after just a few days.

So lots of layers and lots of options. And in each of those options you can always hire someone to do the work for you. Lots of companies will design and build systems that will do what you need. But expect that to be out of the budget, even with the low budget ones. Labor is expensive and everything takes labor.

[eanderso13]

Simple method

I second Larry in that you can get what you want with a Boo Box Flex and a relay board. FrightIdeas just added flicker options to their Director Software (which is free, and is visual, so no programming knowledge needed), so that cuts down on needing any external flicker hardware, or manually programming a non-realistic flicker with a boobox. The relay is to trigger the strobe (which I assume will be a 110AC unit), since the boobox only has solid-state 12v DC outputs. Your candles will either need multi-color single LEDs (not sure they make orange/red ones) or two LEDs in each. Using the Director Software you just program the normal flicker to be in ambient mode. triggered mode would cut the candles, play you're first sound, bring back the candles in red for 4 seconds, then trigger the second sound and strobe, and then whatever you want from there. You can then save the whole program to an SD card and pop it into the Boobox unit.

[Darkness incarnate]

Thanks everyone for the help!
We've decided to go with a boo box and a relay board. Our team has done some research, and it should be relatively easy to program with their director software. We'll be ordering directly from FrightIdeas. As for the candles, we might just scrap the idea of them coming back on in red. Instant strobes would probably be more effective, now that we've thought about it.
Thanks to everyone for their input!

[Karl Fields]

So your Avatar is the same as Larry's and your haunt is Darkness Incarnate. Might consider changing your Avatar to avoid confusion

[Darkness incarnate]

Will do. Just need to find the right pic.

[drfrightner]

Yeah that is a bit odd. LOL

Anyway as a follow up I get all my lighting stuff from Amazon.com now because they have like everything now and it's cheaper plus you get it faster.

As for controls we've used all the companies and frankly we really like Fright Idea's. Great company.

Larry