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When making a motion detector for your 110 V animated event you can start with
just a motion detector component like you see in the above picture shown hanging
below and between the two flood lights. Or, you can buy the whole motion
activated flood light assembly as shown above. The reason I use the assembly is
for some unknown reason the separate component costs nearly twice as much as the
whole set. It is a very important point to make here that not all motion
activated flood light sets can be made into the motion detector we are planning
to make here. The reason for this is that some assemblies have additional
circuitry attached to the inside of the mount for the flood lights that are
required for the detector to work. And you sure don't want to have to solder
these wires all back up together after tearing them out and then assembling them
somehow to the side of the detector component. That's why you should look for
the same brand as shown above if you can find it (It doesn't actually HAVE to be
packaged in Spanish to work does it?). This was purchased from OSH and costs
about $10. It is the least expensive that I can find in my area.
First thing is to disconnect the detector from the rest of the assembly as
shown here. There is an extra length of wire that is used in the attachment to
the light sockets that you will want to save for the next step. On close
inspection of the photo you can just make out two wire couplers on the lower
left. One is for coupling two small electrical wires and the other is one size
larger that accepts three wires. You will need two of each.
 Now we will connect our leads to the detector. I use about 15' of cord
going out to the trigger and about 5' going
 back to the wall socket. You can use
standard zip cord and add your own ends to this arrangement, or you can simply
purchase one 20' extension cord and cut it 5' from the male end and be done with
it. Not only does this take 10 minutes less work, but it costs about 1/3rd as
much as using separate components. I already had the cord for my project so I
assembled the one shown here in this how to. If you are assembling yours from
scratch be sure to put a female plug on the TRIGGER side of your detector and
the male on the WALL side.
To attach to the detector clamp the BLACK wire to either leg of the
extension cord that will be going to the wall. Twist one end of the short
section of white wire that came from the flood light assembly to the WHITE wire
on the detector and then clamp both to the other leg of the cord going to the
wall. Now clamp the RED wire to either leg of the cord going to the event or
trigger (the female cord end). Now clamp the short WHITE jumper wire to the
remaining leg of the trigger cord. Next we see how this actually makes your
oversized dolly barf green chunky water.
While this little goodie shown here
was not used on this particular
how-to showing how to set up a
fully automated sound and trigger
system, I wanted to add this
section here so you could see how
you can solder up your own relay in
a very small, compact package that
has the capacity to totally isolate
trigger signals. Once you have
your detector wired up so it will
send out a 110V signal, you will
cut the output leads short and
solder them to the C and F
terminals of Shown is a 120V, 4
Pole, Double Throw, KH style or
"Ice Cube" relay.
120VAC
D.P.D.T. Relay. When power is then triggered to the relay, there are little
solenoid-driven points that are magnetically pulled together, closing the
circuit to some of the other terminals and opening the others. The A and B
arrows and the E and F arrows shows you where to connect up to two separately
triggered circuits. This is important, as on some props you may have to isolate
two circuits in order to eliminate "ghost" triggering of playback
devices, as we learned on our
Lynching.
Once you have soldered leads to the
A and B terminals for instance, you
will then run these to your timer
to signal it to make your
animatronic go through it's cycle
and then resets 20 seconds later.
Then you will solder to the E and F
another set of leads that will then
signal another timer to tell the
Mimic Machine when to turn on and
then the timer will keep it from
triggering again for 20 seconds
until the first timer resets
through it's cycle. For an expanded
look at using the ice cube relay as
shown here, visit the
Relay Trigger how-to.
Here is the actual relay assembly we used here in this set of photos for the
how-to. Jim Kadel of
Haunt Master
Products
sells a little pre-made package that makes your detector actually trigger two
points that is very affordable and easy to use. He calls this an
Interface
and when your detector fires it sends a 110V signal down the female cord which
then triggers the relay inside this little plastic box which then simply closes
two point, like the points described in the last section above.
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