A while ago a friend of mine upgraded to a resin thrower. He kitted it out well but didn’t have any lights for it so I told him I’d hook him up.
I went with analog circutry because A> I already had most of the parts sitting around and B> I don’t have much experience with microcontrollers yet.
After looking at reference I decided to do two of the three lighting states shown in the movie. At power on the light cap next to the clippard and the slo-blo turns on, the white light on top blinks and the lightbar occilates up and down. Throw the activation switch and the grill lights come on and the light bar goes to full on. For those who don’t know the 3rd state would have been firing where the orange light cap on the tip lights up and the barrel flashes.
With the sequences worked out I prototyped the circuit.
Once I had it working I let it run on a fresh battery to see what the life was like. It killed it in about an hour so I went back and lowered the current on some of the LEDs and added a second battery. I also put the lights that are steady on (the light cap and slo-blo) on a switch so they could be turned off to save power. It should run for a few hours now as long as the grill lights aren’t left on for extended periods. Here’s a final circuit diagram if anyone’s interested:
With a working circuit the next hurdle was shoehorning it all into the wand. If I was going to be doing a bunch of these I would look into having a board etched. As it is I just placed parts on a protoboard as I went.
I spent about an hour diagnosing shorts, mis-wiring, and a busted switch but eventually it all went together. One problem I have is the LED for the light cap is too dim due to placement. My friend recently ordered a more accurate white cap though so when he swaps that out I’ll reposition the LED.
I don’t have a video camera but my friend does so hopefully he’ll post up a clip after I give it back to him. C&C welcome. 