Amongst one of my dafter projects is helping with scenery for the local pantomime. This year we have a lighthouse and I'd like to make the light have the right number and sequence of flashes. 3 at 1.5 seconds every 30 seconds oh yes it is.
I'd love to hear if anyone dabbles in this..
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Hi Morag. I do the same sort of stuff - props/scenery for our local panto. I've been doing it for the last 25 years, so know where you're coming from!
Bourbon's suggestion of a stagehand with a switch certainly could work - I've done similar things that way in the past. Another possibility on the same lines would be to have the thing controlled from the lighting board, but that depends on the specifics of how you do your stage lighting.
If you want to go down the micro-controller route I'd absolutely agree with others that an Arduino Nano is the way to go.
You don't say what sort of lamp you are planning to use (LED? How powerful? Mains or battery?) or if you're after a straight on/off blink or a fade in/out effect. Assuming it's a straight on/off blink it's pretty trivial - you just need the Arduino, a small modification to the standard 'Blink' program and a relay (eg
this ). Slightly more complicated if you want fade in/out, but easily doable. I have a number of spare nano boards, and would be happy to program and send one if all else fails, but always more rewarding to do it yourself!
Wizard of Oz here this year, fortunately not too demanding for me, but my wife has 16 flats to design...
Bob.
