Fireworks Controller

Step 15 Acknowledgements and notes

You may notice that there is no specification on the fuse for right now, the original fuse value had not worked and I am currently figuring out what amperage fuse to use. Sorry for the inconvenience. You can still build the controller, since it still works without a fuse. Use a short piece of wire to bypass the fuseholder until we get the right fuse working.

Also, the construction of the actual igniters is covered in a separate instructable located here.

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I would like to thank the following people for their answers, explanations, and contributions to this project:

• Jon Witucki for the inspiration to make this controller and info on speaker terminals
• everyone at electro tech online, especially eblc1388 for his schematics and electronics knowledge
• tobyfan57 for making me realize what wasn't clear on the instructable to start with and finding a few inconsistencies in the steps
• Also, thanks to TinyCad for keeping their program open source and easy to use so I could make my schematic

Comments

[ak47bobbarke]

 How do you make the actual igniter? and how do you attach it to the electric igniter?

[systemf92]

Check out my other instructable designed to use with this one: Fireworks Igniter
Attach the controller to the igniters using two conductor speaker cable. This is described in step 5 of the above instructable, Using the igniters.

[pittu]

how much can you ignit in series in a single channel.

[systemf92]

I wouldn't recommend series ignition hookups because of the nature of series circuits: The first ignitor that burns up will most likely be the only one that will light. As soon as it burns up, the circuit breaks and none of the other ignitors on the circuit will continue to heat up.

[pdionne]

I posted previously that I was going to use RJ-45 cables, but after checking pricing I decided to go with a 100' 25 pair cable between the controller and the first box at the distant end. Then, on the box at the distant end I'm going to split out the cable, using wires 1 thru 20 as the hot leads and 21 through 25 will be used to provide the ground. Wires 1 and 21 would control cue 1, wires 2 and 21 would control cue 2, wires 3 and 21 would control cue3 and so on. On the controller you would have a rotary switch where you would set it to control which cues you wanted to activate. Position 1 would control cues 1 through 20, position 2 would control 21 through 40 and so on till you get to position 6 of the switch where if selected would feed to a second rotary switch that would control cues 101 through 200. You could gang a whole bank of rotary switches and add an unlimited number of cues that could be controlled. When I have it finished I will post an instructable on making it. Sounds confusing, but really it isn't.

[ak47bobbarke]

 Oh and my email is either [e-mail] or [e-mail]