Hamilton's Halloween

Hello All,

Welcome to Our Halloween Page for 2011. By popular demand we brought back the cannon. The Talking Pumpkin Man (voice courtesy of Skippy) narrated the cannon show. We decided to actually make the cannon "shoot" something, so naturally I figured we should shoot out a cat. It sounded easy enough. It took two different DC gearmotors, two different DC drives, custom pulleys designed by Will, interlocking relay board to control direction and speed, two hundred plus feet of rope, two stuffed cats (one of which we cut in half), programming by Rachel, and six people to lift it onto the roof. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. It was well received by the Trick-or Treat folks. We also built a low-lying fog generator system-idea courtesy of Skippy. The talking Pumpkin uses rope lights, the cat cannon uses pneumatics and a DC gearmotor, and all are run by a Light-O-Rama 24-channel control system. An A/B plc drives the Walkway show (which also uses pneumatics). Optical sensors are used to trigger the two shows. Check out the pictures and videos below.

There are both daytime and nighttime videos of the Cat Cannon. I did not include a video of the Walkway show, but the show consists of Ghosts lighting up and popping up from behind Tomb Stones, Creature trying to escape from the coffin, Three pumpkins rising up and lighting up, the Rocking Chairs with Mr. and Mrs. Skeleton, and Jr. are lit up and rocking, The Pumpkin Man is on the bench under the Spider greeting guests, the Raven flaps his wings, tilts forwards and backwards, and rotates his head, the Spider travels his web from top to bottom, the smoke filled bubble machine and black light adds ambiance, lights and pumpkins add to the festivities, and of course Disney's "Grim Grinning Ghosts" Haunted Mansion Theme Song is playing in the background.

New This Year!!! Links at the bottom of this page to our previous Halloween Pages.

Click on the Little Thumbnail Pictures Below to see a Bigger Picture.

Enjoy!

Rob