[Punk0627]

Anyone have any ideas on how to go about modding the walmart trap using an arduino uno. Mainly I was thinking on putting in the proper ghost trap sounds and lights on and inside the trap and pedal eventually. I also would like to put in a barograph and the little LED on the side too. Im fairly new to arduino and coding so my skill level is very novice but I have no intentions in purchasing a kit on eBay. Any help in the right direction would be greatly appreciated

[DarkSpectre]

I'd look at what others did for the spirit halloween trap since it's the same, they just added a foot switch. Once I get my new 3d printer set up, I plan to add decorative touches to mine and build a pedal to house the existing one. Looking forward to see what you can do!

[Punk0627]

I think I’m going to extend the panels on the trap itself using styrene. I want to replace the battery housing and put it in the boxes in the foot pedal. For the boxes I’ll be using some project boxes I found years ago at radio shack. I think for the exterior details I have a plan, it’s the electronics that will be a bit of an issue. Hopefully everything goes as planned

[Mathew_impact1]

For electronics, first thing to do is mount a proper SPST toggle switch. Have this interrupt a battery wire for a true on off control and save battery wear. The original on/off switch can just be tucked inside out of sight.

Next is a longer cable to the foot switch. I haven't decided if I want the the light on the foot switch to be powered independently from the trap, or powered off the trap. I still haven't been able to find a trap in store. So I haven't probed the wireing yet. But it may be possible with only two or three wires to the peddel. Either way, I'll make the cord detachable. Headphone jacks or tnc connectors would work. Would be easier then building electrical contacts into a Foster pnuematic fitting.

For me, this is The starting point. Down the road it would be nice to install a arduino mini and bar graph display. Maybe even smoke.

[Captain_Howdy1444]

I have the idea to use guitar inputs and a guitar chord to extend the wire and make it easier to take apart for storage. My only issue in moving forward is that Iknow the wire needs to be replaced inside the guitar chord but I dont know what gauge wire to use.

[Mathew_impact1]

By guitar connector, I assume you mean 1/4" headphone connector. Or phone audio jack.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc ... 8798336292

The wire gauge doesn't matter. Any 2 conductor cord is fine. You could even swap the wires with each other as to which connects each side of the switch, and it will still be fine in this application.

[Mathew_impact1]

This post may contain an affiliate link that helps support GBFans.com when you make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

1/4" male phone connector.

Foster 2202 pnuematic connector as used in the film used prop. Note the maile is mounted in the trap and footswitch.

TNC connectors, a bit pricey, but would make a nice electrical substitute.

[NotSabbat]

Here is how Sean Charlesworth made a detachable cable with a positive and negative wire through the cable using the correct pneumatic fittings. Its pretty brilliant, though you need to have access to a 3d printer to do it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/889e5eeuiwtw2 ... 1.pdf?dl=0

You can also buy the gen 2 fittings here:
https://www.hpcouplers.com/products/2-s ... ckCAlXByRM
https://www.hpcouplers.com/collections/ ... 14G_MCNGAw

[Mathew_impact1]

Thanks for that. I already own. Enough Foster connectors for 2 trap/switches. And had been toying with installing a center contacted. But this method is even easier.

[NotSabbat]

I found 2 traps. My end goal was to mod one of them with an arduino board, but to do that I had to know how the mechanism that opened the doors worked; so I opened one up and took apart the mechanical box. Just so it wouldn't get buried, I made a new thread breaking with pictures showing the parts of the mech box in the ghost trap. Hopefully it will be useful. It also includes a wiring diagram and explanations that should be useful to someone doing an arduino mod.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=46484&p=4934550#p4934550

[Mathew_impact1]

I go my Walmart trap on Friday! It lasted about 1 hour before it was attacked by a screwdriver. I spent the evening deciding what I would change, as I've never owned a Spirit trap. Then spent the day Saturday cutting and glueing plastic. Once I had some of that out of my system I decided to investigate the electronics.

The brain is microcontroller. Attached are some transtors to power the LEDs, and a motor control chip. After about an hour of futsing, I came up with a way to make a LED in the foot switch light and blink in unison with red LED on the trap. And still only use two wires going to the foot switch.

Watch video:



The trick is to unsolder the positive black wire going to the foot switch. This the wire closest to the power connector. Now on the underside of the board, solder the wire to the positive terminal (red wire) for the red LED. Next, connect the original switch terminal on the board and the red LED positive terminal to gather with a 1k ohm resistor between them.


Last, connect a red LED directly to the the pins on the foot switch. Touch the led to the foot switch terminals to see which is positive and negative. If the LED doesn't light when the trap is lit. Swap the direction. There is no harm in getting backwards.


Downside to this mod. The red LED on the trap will appear a small amount dimmer, but still plenty bright. It also blanks out while the switch is pressed. The switch has to be held down for at least .5 seconds to trigger the trap. As this change slightly tweeks the debounce technology on the microcontroller.

While I was in there I added a push switch at the top of the handel, that operates the same as the foot switch. And swapped out the power switch. For true power off control, connect the green and the yellow wires to a SPST switch. This will stop power drain while the trap is off.

The white and red wires can removed/ignored, connecting these togather triggers demo mode(no lights in standby). This was what was the "off" option befor changing switches.

[Belli]

This is great. I figured out how to get the board to trigger a relay to run a smoke kit. Adding the blinking light to the pedal just saved me a lot of thinking and will be the final touch before I tackle a better bargraph solution.

[Mathew_impact1]

Glad I could help. I'm about 2/3 finnished modding my second trap. Haven't started a second pedal switch. Please post how you did the relay/smoke unit. I'd love to add it to one of mine.

First trap is a GB2 stunt style, stock (short) back end.
https://imgur.com/gallery/iOw1L7X



The second trap will be a GB1 style. With a lengthened back end.

[Belli]

I posted a video of it before I added fans to the "How To Build a Proton Pack" Facebook group. I cant seem to upload pics to this forum.

The smoke kit is the usual fish tank pump and Kanger T2 cart setup.

First I replaced the switch with a DPDT. Wired the red and white trap switch wires to one pole, and the other pole I've run to the battery.
- Doing this you will then need to connect the yellow and green switch wires together. The Spongeface trap kit instructions more or less cover this part.

I replaced the AA with a 6v rechargeable pack. I use a voltage step down to feed the trap 3.3v.

At this point the trap should work like it did our of the box.

Then I got a 5v low trigger relay which most will react to as low as 3.3v but virtually none work with less.

Connect signal side of the relay to 3.3v positive and negative (I used the trap board pins) and connect the signal/trigger to the red wire of the green compartment LED (I also used the board pin for this).

Now the relay works whenever the green lights come on. You can use the door position sensors too.

How you connect the smoke kit is up to you. Mine runs off the 6v side of the voltage step down. It works on the 3.3v side too but less smoke. One battery for all of it was my goal. On off volume knob for manual "hot trap" smoke.

[Punk0627]

Has anyone ever done the light sequence for the bar graph and red blinking LED. I’m trying to in Arduino but I can’t seem to make it run while closing the trap manually.

[Mathew_impact1]

More info needed. Is the arduino replacing main board. Or just running bar led s? Wal-Mart trap or spirit?

[Punk0627]

So what I want to do is to run the LEDs using my pro trinket Arduino board. Im using a 10 LED bar graph and one LED on the side of the bar graph and the red LED near the handle. I’m using a second switch rather then using one the traps pedal comes with. So I want the switch to activate the LEDs for a light sequence for when the traps opens and closes. What I’m trying to do is this. One push of the Arduino button and that activates the light sequence. It’s about the length of the traps original sounds and lights. So it’s timed pretty nice. And since you can close the trap during the lights and sounds, this is kinda where I’m stuck. I want to run a second light sequence which is for when the doors close and run the second half of the first light sequence thus being the part that displays as the trap closes along side it. If anyone has any ideas or questions feel free to ask. Probably going to post my current code when I clean it up a bit

[Mathew_impact1]

Seams to me you should use the green led output to trigger the sequence. The output goes to 3v when the trap is open. That way the arduino knows when the trap is opening and closing. And can interrupt it's normall run and go into recovery mode early.

[Belli]

So what I want to do is to run the LEDs using my pro trinket Arduino board. Im using a 10 LED bar graph and one LED on the side of the bar graph and the red LED near the handle. I’m using a second switch rather then using one the traps pedal comes with. So I want the switch to activate the LEDs for a light sequence for when the traps opens and closes. What I’m trying to do is this. One push of the Arduino button and that activates the light sequence. It’s about the length of the traps original sounds and lights. So it’s timed pretty nice. And since you can close the trap during the lights and sounds, this is kinda where I’m stuck. I want to run a second light sequence which is for when the doors close and run the second half of the first light sequence thus being the part that displays as the trap closes along side it. If anyone has any ideas or questions feel free to ask. Probably going to post my current code when I clean it up a bit

The green LED is powered during the "animation"
There are two door position switches. When triggered each generates about 3v. Trap closed the close switch is on, open switch off. reverse when open.

My smoke triggers off the LED
Seems like you would want to trigger off of the closed door position switch somehow.

[Belli]

The trick is to unsolder the positive black wire going to the foot switch. This the wire closest to the power connector. Now on the underside of the board, solder the wire to the positive terminal (red wire) for the red LED. Next, connect the original switch terminal on the board and the red LED positive terminal to gather with a 1k ohm resistor between them.

Does this need to be a 1/4w 1k ohm or can a 1/2w work?

[Belli]

The trick is to unsolder the positive black wire going to the foot switch. This the wire closest to the power connector. Now on the underside of the board, solder the wire to the positive terminal (red wire) for the red LED. Next, connect the original switch terminal on the board and the red LED positive terminal to gather with a 1k ohm resistor between them.

Does this need to be a 1/4w 1k ohm or can a 1/2w work?

I tried it with the 1/2w and it works just fine.

[Belli]

Here is my trap.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBl8GVyDbGI ... 63wh7gqi50

[Bison256]

Here is my trap.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBl8GVyDbGI ... 63wh7gqi50

You know I wonder if there is a way to recreate that "fan shaped light" effect from the movie. Has anyone put a small laser projector in a trap? Thought I realize that could be dangerous, ironically defictionalizing the warning on the prop.
Edit: something similar to this? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nPzeglKFgMs
A projector paired with a smoke machine like in your trap would be perfect.

[Mathew_impact1]

I tried it with the 1/2w and it works just fine.

1/2w is fine, but you could use a 1/4w. Or 1/8w just as well. The resistor will be running below 1/100w of power at any time. This would most likely work as well with a resistor values of 500 to 2000 ohms. I used 1000 ohms, as I had 1 handy.

[Belli]

I tried it with the 1/2w and it works just fine.

1/2w is fine, but you could use a 1/4w. Or 1/8w just as well. The resistor will be running below 1/100w of power at any time. This would most likely work as well with a resistor values of 500 to 2000 ohms. I used 1000 ohms, as I had 1 handy.

I had a handful of the 1/2w 1k left over from the gizmo build. So glad it worked and thanks for figuring it out. With the Charlesworth cable mod, it seems to do the impossible. Most assume it’s wireless.

[NotSabbat]

You know I wonder if there is a way to recreate that "fan shaped light" effect from the movie. Has anyone put a small laser projector in a trap? Thought I realize that could be dangerous, ironically defictionalizing the warning on the prop.
Edit: something similar to this? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nPzeglKFgMs
A projector paired with a smoke machine like in your trap would be perfect.

So, Ive put some thought into that and I think building a "laser vortex" would do the trick. For any that don't know what those are they are cones of laser light projected through fog and from the side they look like this (If you use a green laser):



They are apparently also very easy to make as well because the cone is created by bouncing a laser off of an angled spinning mirror through some smoke. The community has already got smoke generators down, it should be hard to take things to the next level.

Here is a video on how to make one using a PC fan to spin the mirror:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ltj_FOn0AY

Find a way to change the angle of the mirror while its spinning and you can even animate it.

There are also some ready made options out there as well if you want to just buy something.

[Mathew_impact1]

I think your laser vortex will look amazing! If I ever get around to adding smoke to my trap, I might barrow this do my trap as well.

[NotSabbat]

I think your laser vortex will look amazing! If I ever get around to adding smoke to my trap, I might barrow this do my trap as well.

Thanks!
Well, I know Im pretty slow to do a build, so I wanted to throw it out there for people to use. Better to have someone else build it than to never see it built.

[Belli]

You know I wonder if there is a way to recreate that "fan shaped light" effect from the movie. Has anyone put a small laser projector in a trap? Thought I realize that could be dangerous, ironically defictionalizing the warning on the prop.
Edit: something similar to this? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nPzeglKFgMs
A projector paired with a smoke machine like in your trap would be perfect.

So, Ive put some thought into that and I think building a "laser vortex" would do the trick. For any that don't know what those are they are cones of laser light projected through fog and from the side they look like this (If you use a green laser):



They are apparently also very easy to make as well because the cone is created by bouncing a laser off of an angled spinning mirror through some smoke. The community has already got smoke generators down, it should be hard to take things to the next level.

Here is a video on how to make one using a PC fan to spin the mirror:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ltj_FOn0AY

Find a way to change the angle of the mirror while its spinning and you can even animate it.

There are also some ready made options out there as well if you want to just buy something.

I’m adding a USB Mini Disco light which gets close to the effect and doesn’t need me to engineer much. Cost $2.

[Bison256]

That laser vortex is perfect! We just need to recreate a proton stream and our childhood dreams are a reality.