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 It is difficult to see everything stuffed into the chest cavity of our jerk,
but at the top is the powered speaker (mostly hidden), the mimic under that and
a 9 volt power supply to the right of that, then the Event Control Timer and to
it's right is another power source for the powered speaker and below that the
Vari-PET timer. Then of course you see the air ram, the air muffler is at the
bottom left and of course front and center of the bottom is our motion detector.
When adjusting the animations of the prop I recorded around 6 seconds of sound (the recorder is
limited to a max. of 8) with my own voice gurgling and groaning anxiously. I
hooked that up to an ECT that was set for a 20 second cycle,
so the Mimic would have power going to it for that amount of time. Then the
Vari-PET
timer which runs the pneumatics of the prop, plugged directly into the bottom outlet
of the outlet strip was then timed to make him jerk his legs up and down sporadically
for around 20 seconds. Then both timers were set to 20 seconds OFF time so
they couldn't be re-triggered by the same victim while walking away. What was
curious here was that even though we wired up the electronics in such a way as
to isolate the Mimic from the other electrical surges from all the other powered
things going on, it still regularly triggered repeatedly 3 times while the ECT
had the power going to it. This means that we have both sound and motion for a
full 20 second run! So what was a huge headache turned in to a blessing in
disguise.
 It turned out the air cylinder we used was double acting, which means it will
push or pull the plunger. This is a cool feature, but it also means that you
need to attach both the inlet (top) and the second inlet
 (bottom) to the exhaust
muffler shown in the top right close-up photo. This is a new construction of muffler, using
1"
PVC pipe 2 1/2" long with one end capped and threaded for the valve you see
installed. The muffler is then stuffed firmly with foam rubber and then screws
are installed at the end to keep the foam from coming back out. This super
compact muffler makes all exhaust from the cylinder completely silent, making it not
only extremely easy to fit inside of any pneumatic prop, but perfectly
effective. It was attached to the PVC stomach upright with 2 modified 1" X
1" L brackets.
Also in the top left pic you will see the motion detector field of vision
screen has been reduced to a very tight, small field with the use of black
electrical tape. Now your victim will need to be pretty close to directly in
front of the prop before it will fire, ensuring they will definitely witness the
gruesome death.
 Here is another look at the back of our dummy where you will see that the
PVC pipe neck has been heated up with a heat gun and bent forward to imitate the
slouched forward head of a hanging man. This is about a 20 degree angle shown
here. When dressed, I simply slipped a wig head over the neck and connected it
with one long screw through the neck of the head and into the pipe on each side.
You can see at the base of the neck is a mirror
hanger attached with a single screw (NOTE: this was ultimately replaced with a
solid 2" mending plate for added strength after our jerk jerked himself
loose by breaking one of the mirror hangers). This is where we will suspend
him from using a steel cable attached to the gallows with an eye bolt and to a
snap clip on the other, making him detachable. The cable needs to be about
10" long. There is also the air line connector and the power IN for our
spastic shown in close ups below.
 Here in the right photo you can see a cut out of the foam and the
air line has been slipped through a hole in the back board and attached using a
cable clamp. It is fitted on the end with a quick connect for 3/16" O.D.
vinyl hose, also making it easy to detach if we want to take our boy down for
any reason. In the left pic is the
square cut-out in the foam where we
have fitted a hard-mounted female
110
 V
electrical cord outlet we recycled
from the back of an old tape deck,
which is soldered to the shortened
end of the power strip on the other
side of the back board. The
electric cord from the same deck
was then was wired to the electric
cord we have imbedded inside the
core of the gallows, making the
plug in very slender and easy to
hide under the clothes of the
dummy, and just like the air and
cable fasteners, allows him
to be removed for repairs.
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