Low-power smoke machine?

Community Projects
1

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…

2

Your project sounds super badass! I was curious so I did some searching and found some good stuff when I looked for battery powered fog machines, specifically the Wizard Stick! ($23) http://www.amazon.com/American-Science- … rid_pt_0_0

According to the comments this thing works like a spray bottle with a heating element. When you squeeze the trigger it turns the element on and squirts a bit of juice onto it. I’m sure that, with some modifications, this thing will do exactly what you want. If it were my project I would rig up a servo to the stick’s trigger and then use an arduino to turn the servo every 30 seconds to a minute to conserve battery life.

There is also something called a smoke pencil that would be perfect ($34, check the video) http://www.smokepencil.com/

Alternatively, if you are feeling industrious you could totally build this yourself with an electric pump, an electric cigarette lighter, and a spray nozzle. Hmm, I think that I really want to build one of these now!

3

Thank you! I’ve been looking for days for something like this!

To conserve battery life, I plan on only using the device when the case is positioned on a surface and open (a tilt sensor in the lid should take care of this nicely). So that should last me quite a while! The spraying time and interval will have to be tweaked a bit, but that’s no problem at all.

If you like, I can take pictures during the build and a video of the end result. I hope it’s as badass as I have in mind!

4

Please do, I’d really like to see the final product!

5

Well shucks. It seems that the wizard stick is entirely unavailable in the Netherlands, and the smoke pencil is going to be expensive enough to make me have second thoughts about buying one.

I’m going to try building one, I think. If I’m careful, a cigarette lighter should last me long enough, I just need to figure out how to power it exactly, or I could use another heater with enough power. Would it work to just heat a small reservoir of fluid, or should I really get a pump? And for the life of me I can’t find a spray nozzle that’s not at least a few centimeters in diameter…

Why are parts so hard to come by in the Netherlands? :frowning:

Edit: I think I have an idea! I’ve found a 12V heater that can reach ~250 degrees surface temperature with only about 1.75A of current. My plan is to just mount a small tank of smoke fluid inside the suitcase, and have a solenoid briefly open an improvised valve to release a bit of liquid onto the heater plate. That should give me some smoke, and after a while, the light effects from the LED should be accompanied by a nice bit of smoke, and it should only set me back about 20 euros. Now to figure out how to improvise the valve.

6

If I remember correctly, sugar burns at a pretty low temperature and makes a lot of smoke. It’s sure easy to come by :wink:

7

Heh, sugar isn’t even a bad idea necessarily, but the gunk is hard to properly clean off, it smells horrible and it would be hard to keep going for a longer time. Oh well, you get what you pay for I guess :stuck_out_tongue:

Edit: I’m done wondering! Looking around for parts for my homemade smoke machine, I found a very nice employee at my local electronics shop, who recommended I check out smoke generators for model trains and factories. Found one for factory chimneys for about 10 euros, ordered two, and now all I need is a cheap attache case to start building!

8

Hi, I’ve been trying off and on for a year or so, to make a battery- smoke/jet effect for Iron Man costume jet effects.

E-cig looks good. it cant be too hot or cold to wear as a backpack. Any ideas helpful. Thanks

9

Hi

I might be able to help as have played around with making small smoke effects with ecigs. Have a look over at http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Smo … earomiser/ as a starter. This video gives an idea of the smoke effect you can get https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4inqLh8UXsg

i’m just at the moment attempting to print some 3d parts to make it all fit together better.

Chris