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Last week, a small contingent of SparkFunions headed out to Fritzler Farms in LaSalle, Colorado. Since 2000, Fritzler Farms has been in the business of Halloween entertainment, with a haunted hotel, an awesome corn maze and a handful of other Halloween-ish activities (like the zombie hunt where you ride around in a SWAT team style school bus while firing paintballs at zombies...but I digress).
What we were particularly interested in was their use of electronics. When the Fritzler family started out, they quickly came to realize that the types of haunted installments they wanted to use were 1) very pricey and 2) could not be customized. So, Trevor Fritzler and friend Joshua Stanton started Extreme Custom Makers to start building their own awesome haunted creations using a bevy of readily available parts (many of which come from SparkFun). The results are pretty brilliant:
ReplaceMeOpen
ReplaceMeClose
Trevor and Josh are constantly coming up with new crazy ideas for Fritzler Farms, and this year they pulled out all the stops to create a one-of-a-kind haunted experience. We can't recommend enough that you take a visit and check out the amazing work these guys are doing.
Thank you SFE for New Product Friday,(we never miss it and it always inspires ideas) the amazing education team, (we have each attended multiple classes) providing data sheets(RTFM) , and keeping parts in stock. (sometimes the blue smoke gets let out and we need a new widget) We have met many of you and have NEVER been let down, your customer service and overall attitudes are inspiring. We look up to all of you and hope someday we can be a company with your excellence.
Joshua & Trevor Extreme Custom Makers
Thanks for the feedback! Let us know if there's anything we can do to continue to make your experience an awesome one :)
I work with a haunt in WV and we have started to get into doing some of our own stuff similar to what are doing with Sparkfun electronics. I think this is great, most haunt stuff is just way too expensive. We are going to focus this year in the off season on building some of our own animatronics using Sparkfun gear. I mostly work with our sound and was really interested in your sound set up that they showed in the video above. I was wondering about what you where using. There are about a dozen little black boxes on the wall that look like they might be amps that I wanted to ask what they where.
Where in WV? I live out near Harper's Ferry and could probably help out.
We are down in Charleston about 1/4 mile from the capitol building. you can shoot me an email at brianhoskinson@thehauntedbarnwv.com
My favorite thing about Fritzler is that their Peyton Manning corn maze from last year is visible from Google Earth!
40.2995 N / 104.7603 W
@bhoskinson Those are amps each have their own sound card and can be triggered individually for a theatrical sound or looped for ambient. They are separated for room to room sound. Let me know if we can answer anymore questions for you or help you with anything. Trevor ECM
Very cool, thanks. Car amps that run off of 12v I assume since you said the entire room was low voltage? I recognize the little sound triggers hanging off of the amps, we have some of those same triggers. I love getting to see behind the curtains so to speak of other haunts to see how they configure things.
What haunters really need, instead of these big trade shows are more maker like communities where we share ideas and how to information. Open source haunting would only make the industry better. Keep every one thinking and improving on each other's designs and ideas.
Around minute 4:30 he talks about the lighting of the shelves. he mentioned they are running 3 different programs and they should never be the same. shortly after that, is it just me or did the lights turn the same color? Just found that funny, thought I would share.
I think it's just the natural consequence of fading between colours.The source and the destination colours are different, but in the process of cross fading, between them, they both hit a similar off whitish colour.
I work for a haunt/fall festival also! Their haunt looks very good. It is also very good to see other people creating their own electronics prop. At haunt trade shows all the electronics companies have extremely un-customizable devices that are very expensive.
Developing electronics for Halloween exhibits is an excellent way to get better at it. Doing some really fancy stuff can get expensive, though, so it takes some cleverness to do it with as much useful junk (windshield wiper motors, e.g.).
Oh man! This is like the definition of awesome!!
This is something very similar to my dream job! Working with microcontrollers to interface with a HUGE variety of different sensors and actuators, and then to do it all over again with a new project each year. I can only imagine how much fun these guys have!