- Wed Oct 16, 2013 11:29 pm
#164493
Hey there,
I have an idea for a Halloween costume that involves a suitcase, some light effects, and preferably some smoke. I've got most of it figured out, but the smoke is giving me some trouble.
The idea is to have a small, low-powered way to make some smoke that I can lug around and run inside the suitcase, so preferably something I can power with a battery. I have a number of ideas already, but I wondered if any of you could give some feedback and suggestions.
One would be a modified e-cig. It's cheap and relatively easy, and works off ~5V, so I could use my portable phone charger to run it. The drawback is that e-cigs tend to draw quite some current (I've found figures as high as 2A), so even with the 5200 mAh charger I wouldn't be able to run it for long, and running only when the case is open is not much of an option since the warmup time would kind of ruin the effect. Besides, I'm not even sure that 2A won't fry the charger.
Another one is dry ice. As a positive point, this is probably as low-power as you can get, but dry ice won't last all night and is rather expensive for use in a Halloween costume. Also, I'm not sure it's a good idea to chill my suitcase to well subzero temperatures with an arduino and some LEDs inside.
The third option would be a heater and fog juice. An obvious advantage is that it's easy to construct, and I can run it off any voltage I like, but it would take some planning to keep fluid from leaking out at different angles (I'll obviously be carrying the case around upright, and I'll be setting it down to open it). Also, I don't know how much power I need to heat the fog juice sufficiently. I have a lot of spare AAs and battery connectors lying around, so supplying ~24 V wouldn't be much of a problem, but I'm not sure if supplying the needed power would have my batteries last beyond ten minutes, let alone all night.
My final option would be an ultrasonic atomizer. I've found a few cheap ones that run off 24V, but they run off 24V AC, and all I can supply portably is DC. And this would probably require even more construction than the heater idea to keep the suitcase from filling up with water.
Any feedback or suggestions? Maybe even different options? I'm kind of stumped here...
I have an idea for a Halloween costume that involves a suitcase, some light effects, and preferably some smoke. I've got most of it figured out, but the smoke is giving me some trouble.
The idea is to have a small, low-powered way to make some smoke that I can lug around and run inside the suitcase, so preferably something I can power with a battery. I have a number of ideas already, but I wondered if any of you could give some feedback and suggestions.
One would be a modified e-cig. It's cheap and relatively easy, and works off ~5V, so I could use my portable phone charger to run it. The drawback is that e-cigs tend to draw quite some current (I've found figures as high as 2A), so even with the 5200 mAh charger I wouldn't be able to run it for long, and running only when the case is open is not much of an option since the warmup time would kind of ruin the effect. Besides, I'm not even sure that 2A won't fry the charger.
Another one is dry ice. As a positive point, this is probably as low-power as you can get, but dry ice won't last all night and is rather expensive for use in a Halloween costume. Also, I'm not sure it's a good idea to chill my suitcase to well subzero temperatures with an arduino and some LEDs inside.
The third option would be a heater and fog juice. An obvious advantage is that it's easy to construct, and I can run it off any voltage I like, but it would take some planning to keep fluid from leaking out at different angles (I'll obviously be carrying the case around upright, and I'll be setting it down to open it). Also, I don't know how much power I need to heat the fog juice sufficiently. I have a lot of spare AAs and battery connectors lying around, so supplying ~24 V wouldn't be much of a problem, but I'm not sure if supplying the needed power would have my batteries last beyond ten minutes, let alone all night.
My final option would be an ultrasonic atomizer. I've found a few cheap ones that run off 24V, but they run off 24V AC, and all I can supply portably is DC. And this would probably require even more construction than the heater idea to keep the suitcase from filling up with water.
Any feedback or suggestions? Maybe even different options? I'm kind of stumped here...
