The Bongo guy is Dean Cuadra of Santa Monica, California.
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| I belong to a group of crazy people who take Halloween fun VERY SERIOUSLY! We're REALLY into Halloween. Since the mid seventies, we've been putting on increasingly elaborate and ludicrously over-engineered Halloween parties for our closest friends. | |
| We take over an acre of land, and begin putting together our Halloween party in July. If we're lucky, we're done cleaning up by Thanksgiving, but it sometimes extends into December. | |
| We have computer-controlled pneumatic special effects, electronic ghouls with audio circuitry to terrify guests with ghastly growls and ghoulish groans, an elaborate cemetery with computerized tombstones, automatic smoke machines, man-made lightning and thunder, a computerized electric chair (complete with victim), rats, electronic bats, and other scary stuff (like run-on sentences)! Our Halloween site has hundreds of feet of underground plumbing for our pneumatic special effects. | |
| Our most elaborate effect, by far, is a computer-controlled mausoleum. Taking over a month of weekends to set up, the mausoleum is a serious piece of work! It features a computer that controls digital audio, pneumatic valves and solid-state optically isolated relays for lighting. The computer monitors the state of dozens of sensors, for safety and for a snappy, precisely timed show. | |
| The music starts and the house lights dim. A spotlight illuminates the crypt door. The crypt door opens (which reminds me-- We need to add a squeaking sound for that door). A full-size coffin rolls out on a steel track, pushed out of the mausoleum by a massive pneumatic cylinder. The coffin lid rises. From inside the coffin, a corpse sits up, turns his head toward the audience, and does a show. During the show, various other occupants of the mausoleum have their say, including "squeaky" the rat, and whomever else we have time to rig up! | |
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Introducing-- the star of our mausoleum show... (oops- I forgot that we never actually named him). Amidst a computer-controlled fog cloud, our computerized corpse rises from the dead! |
Here's a closeup of our robotic corpse. The top of his head comes off, for servicing his brain. He's sensitive about that unsightly seam in his skull, so he sometimes wears a headband to cover it up . |
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Some of our Halloween Expertise: |
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Stepper motors |
Servo motors |
Solenoids |
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Custom-designed microcontroller and timing circuits |
Trigger circuits, including active infrared, passive infrared, and pressure mats |
Solid-state audio |
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X-10® carrier-current control systems |
Aquatic Effects |
Radio-linked people-detection systems |
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Optically-isolated relays and controls |
Pneumatic cylinders and mounting techniques |
24-volt pneumatic control valves |
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Air compressors and plumbing to distribute compressed air for pneumatic special effects |
Electronic bats |
Fog generation |
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Professional lighting and audio effects |
Sound equipment for distribution of party music |
Photo studio |
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Radio equipment for communications among staff members |
Every Makita tool known to man |
Drywall screws, drywall screws, and more drywall screws! |
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