so we were blowing stuff up this year and we thought to ourselves, hey this would be really nice to blow stuff up in a more controlled way. anyway after a while the mention of a relayed controller through either paralle/serial/usb would be almost perfect. the easiest way would be to use squibs on the parallel port with an optioisolated breakout board, but that would really only give us 8 things at a time to blow up or in any given sequence. however couldn't one really have 256 seperate controllable items to use if you went with data instead? anyway if anyone has any suggestions or comments on this little project or possibly a led controller that would basically be the same thing it would be greatly appreciated.
Seeing as professional shows are done electronically now, I'd think it's not too hard. I know there's software made for this type of thing, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's totally proprietary. I don't know a whole lot about parallel ports, but I don't see why you couldn't use some sort of chip that converts your 8-bit binary output into something more useful. But a match and a stopwatch absolutely needs to be more fun.
Isn't it not till tomorrow? why did you blow things up already. At my house we just make red and blue jello and put it on a white plate.
we are going to a big show on the 4'th so we blew up stuff early. I was playing around with a breakout board i have that is optoisolated and was getting squibs to go off, but like i said in my first post, shooting off 8 things at once is pretty lame however if i could get a syncronized 200+ bottlerockets to shoot off, now that would be fun and geeky
um maby this will help. http://www.users.on.net/~symes/iocard.htm and if you can lets get as many people on the forum for that sight as well. its been dead for a wile over there
Isnt it done using dmx systems nowadays? I only mention it cus i see a lot of dmx kits becomeing available cheep now.
sweet now we are talking, looks like i might be able to handle this one http://computerchristmas.com/index.phtml?link=how_to&HowToId=25 however i'm curious about dmx systems. googleing dmx is pretty much a lost cause even with other qualifiers mostly because of the music guy dmx. if you have more info or a place to go it would be appreciated. thanks again guys.
BTW DMX= Digital MultipleXing think of it as entertainment networking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMX_(lighting) http://dmxtheater.plekkie.net/ KITS http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46502&criteria=dmx&doy=4m7 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=43888&criteria=dmx&doy=4m7
wow thanks for the links, that usb controlled dmx looks like it might be the best solution yet. I'm going to have to look into all of these and see which one suits me the best. This will eventually turn into a dangerous project at least for blowing stuff up. again thanks for the links everyone and if you have any other suggestions i'm all ears.
heh, its funny that the wikipedia article on the DMX systems specifically mentions how they arent to be used with pyrotechnics.
Hm... The parallel Port can switch up to 5x8 relays (you've got an eight bit port and five control lines that can be used like chip selects to switch between 5 banks of 8 relays each). There's a winamp plugin that can control relays over the parallel port(of course in patterns that dance to the music, used that once for a birthday party... damn cool), the project page even has circuit diagrams on how to build the relay boards. (don't know the link, just look on the winamp page and search for the discolitez plugin) It's pretty easy, plus you'll be able to set your fireworks off to the music!!! If you use shift registers instead of a direct relay out you could extend the amount of controllable fireworks up to 5x8x8 (of course only 5x8 at a time, the shift registers will keep shifting to the next bank of 5x8 firecrackers )
