Trap beginnings

Equipment Ghost Traps
1

This forum has been just incredibly inspiring. It’s persuaded me to take my GB outit and gear to the next level. The homebuilt traps have been awesome, and now I’m ready to do the same.

I work at a pipeline construction company, and they use cameras mounted on “tractors” to survey lines for repairs.

One of the guys I work with is really good with electronics, he’s gotten an old motor, knobs, and ideas. Ideas also from the head engineer for this project. Servos, pistons, all sorts of stuff I’m not familar with, but to him, it’s a snap.

Blinking lights…it’ll have 'em. The goal is to have a trap that is very similar to the original, but will be updated. Led’s, servo’s, piston, etc. Styrene for parts, aluminum, etc. Got some real parts coming from GBprops, so it will tie into the original as well.

Opening and closing doors is something we think we’ve got figured out with the pedal and a piston. Don’t know if we’ll have space to make it hop, but hopefully. A rechargeable battery is going in it, as it will have several bits of electronic gear.

Since the stuff we work with has to fit into a 4" pipe, it’s got to be small. We’re looking at small, lightweight stuff, parts from RC planes, etc. Can’t have it drag off my belt! :slight_smile:

I’m really excited about this project, and so is my co-worker! I’ll take pics of the construction process.

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Congrads man! Keep us posted.

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Got much of the parts so far. For the interior, I found at Hobby Lobby sheet styrene that has a nice bright chrome finish. Using it on the bottom of the doors as well. I’m hoping it will reflect the blue led lights pretty well.

Got the heat sink from AJ. Still looking for a vector plate.

At work, we found a bunch of old knobs, should work out pretty good. Not quite original, but still cool.

Need to pickup dbl rechargeable dbl A battery pack. Found one at Best Buy for with 4 batteries.Need to get at Radio Shack two 4-battery holders.

Plan on turning the orange “tubes” on the side of the trap into glowing ones.

Bar graph-type led on the top of the trap, opposite the handle.

Still working out the “step on the pedal, open trapdoors, step off pedal, doors close” issue. Looking at air pump type actuators/ pistons w/ springs attached to the doors. Trying to find something small enough and affordable.

Or possibly a small servo in the trap. We found one at work that’s about 6" long and 2.5" thick. Trying to find a smaller one.

Looking into possibly w/ the servo’s having a belt mounted unit, where to step on the pedal, hit the button, trap opens, hit the button again, trap closes…

Saw a fellow GB’er post about using lowrider model kit “hopper”. Checked at Hobby Lobby, didn’t have much luck there with them. It’s #4 on the priority list…

Ultimate Trap Goals would be:

  1. Build one- :slight_smile:

  2. led light it

  3. red blinky light goes on *after *doors shut.

  4. Able to make it hop after doors shut

  5. Smoke it…

Regarding the smoker, that looks pretty tough. Read all the posts here about doing so. We thought about the railroad smoker juice, putting in a small metal box (one of those mint boxes) sealing the lid so it doesn’t leak doesn’t let the smoke out. You could run a battery lead to the metal box, activate it by a switch, heating up the metal, making it smoke, doesn’t take too much juice at all to do so, but it’s got a lot of R&D to get it working. A lot.