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[William Blue]

I need to know if anyone has an idea on how to light the path of a pumpkin shot from a cannon. My idea was to use industrial strobe lights spaced along the flight path that would fire in sequence as the pumpkin passes before each strobe. I am looking for programs that might allow this and if you would use sensors to determine the firing of the strobes or would you use the velocity of the pumpkin and a timer to fire the strobes. I know this is a stretch from stage lighting but I am not sure where to start or who to ask. Any suggestions, no matter how stupid would be appreciated. Thank you, William

[Tom Bourke]

ok, I will bite.  WHY?  What are you trying to accomplish?

As for ways to do it I can think of a few.

I would probably use LED lights and a DMX light board or computer to turn them on.  Conventional are probably too slow to respond.  Strobes probably don't have a long enough interval of light. Have some way to trigger the GO button for the sequence when the pumpkin leaves the barrel.

[William Blue]

Ok. Here is the scoop. I am working on a lighting design for a large farm that does a Halloween bash during mid September, October and early November. They draw about 60,000 people over the course of 10 weeks. They have a 30 acre haunted forest, an 80 acre haunted corn maze and a smaller one. They have a 1000 gallon pumpkin cannon and a 300 gallon pumpkin cannon. The smaller of the 2 cannons would be used during the evening as the larger cannon ejects very large pumpkins over 400 yards and cant be used at night. I am currently getting the specs for the smaller cannon as to velocity at the barrel end of the cannon. The idea is to light the pumpkins on their flight path without having to use stadium type lighting that would essentially light the entire sky and possibly disrupt parts of the forest or corn maze which require complete darkness. This is why I thought of the strobes, such as they use to light flight paths at an airport. They are quick to react and just as quick to power down. The problem is designing the system to cover an area of about 100 yd's. This again is why I thought of the strobes as they are low power and the light quickly dissipates. I considered using a line of static pars with a standard lighting program  that would fire in sequence ahead of the pumpkins but the cost of operating a system and the equipment required might be cost prohibitive and when you add the cost of maintaining that type of system with regards to weather proofing...... well you get the idea. I hadn't considered the led option and that may be something to look at as well. The public is welcome to fire the cannon during the daytime and she makes a very large sum doing so. By adding this event at night with a coordinated light show may make it even that much more profitable. On my end, its not about the money, that comes later, but trying to figure the design and make it affordable right now is the main goal. Perhaps in the future I'll make money down the road by making it simple, workable and affordable and then selling it to other corn maze operations, especially since these types of operations are becoming increasingly popular. For right now, I would rather bring it to fruition and see it work as the idea I have in my head. That in a nutshell is the idea. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, William

[James Feenstra]

light the pumpkins on fire

[William Blue]

Yeah, that would be cool, but something tells me that  allowing the public to fire flaming pumpkins would make the insurance sky rocket. I thought what would be really cool would be some kind of spray on application that would make the pumpkins glow in the dark without gumming up the cannon. Then you could use those industrial black light generators. It would make the halloween thing really pop.

[Rob Timmerman]

Not cheap (the high power blacklights aren't cheap either), but http://www.wildfirefx.com/products/paints/luminescent.aspx

[John Birchman, CTS]

For that kind of distance, even the long through units from Wildfire wouldn't cut it.  But UV does seem to be a good option to cover the distance.

But one of the Syncrolite units with the UV configuration should work fine for this:

http://www.syncrolite.com/options/option_uv.html

Would be pricey to buy, but I would think you should be able to rent a unit or 2 for the run of your event.

The only cheaper option would be to put LED's in the pumpkin (green would give you the best visibility) with a small battery pack.

Also, you could paint the pumpkins with Glow in the Dark Paint, and then use any small Blacklight to charge the pumpkins leading up to them being fired:

http://glowinc.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=11

John

[Tom Bourke]

Where are you?

Also perhaps go with the theatrics of it.  A row of LEDs chasing down the barrel.  A big LED par at the end to light the end of the pumpkin as it heads away from you as a mussel flash.  Maybe a group of cans down at the end pointed back to simulate an explosion.

[dave stojan]

Sounds like a job for a couple of big (used) mirror scanners, a trigger and DMX controller set up to trace the typical pumpkin arc. At 50 ~ 100 yards the beam should be large enough to allow for a fair bit of flight path deviation. BTW how much does it vary?

edit - PS: You may get by using a half dozen multi-million candlepower beams (handheld sized) arrayed to cover the arc path as well. (The way up is a relatively straight path & could be covered by using said light attached somewhat akin to a rifle scope on the cannon barrel. The path down gets a bit more difficult however it creates a golden opportunity to use some (surplus) aircraft landing strobes (planted out in the landing area) to mark the "surprise" estimated impact.  

[Sean Conerly]

I say just spray it all over with glow in the dark paint have a light table set up to "charge" em up then fire away. The amount of lights necessary to get that kinda distance and also the cabling would be a huge cost. Now please dont let me discourage your efforts as i think you have a great idea going and would love to see the end result. So if you do go with the strobe design please post pics and video so we can all see it.