One event was the Centerpiece Contest. In the main dining room of the hotel, attendees gathered for the GOlden Bucky Awards and were invited to create a ceterpiece for their table. The Castle Crew decided to create a miniature version of our gothic archway, complete with sound, lighting, and animation in the form of miniature silk flames.
The white trapezoid-shaped base of the centerpiece was created by Kevin out of 1/4" styrene stock, and housed the audio amplifier and speaker. Dave scratch-built the archway from Plastruct stone-patterned sheets and square tubing. The top of the arch colums held a jumbo red LED and a miniature computer cooling fan to create the miniature silk flame effect.
At one point, Dave and Kevin just snapped under the pressure. When they recovered, Dave added an MP3 player to the base to provide the soundtrack. Kevin, his head now full of hotmelt glue, continued soldering together the various LEDs.
After the wiring and electrical portion was completed, Myranda (The Witch herself!) jumped into the fray to help with the design and decoration. As you can see, the "dirt" surface has been added to the "ground" under the arch, as well as two tombstones. The tombstones were lit from within, and flashed in sync with the lightning.
Last, we added a broom (for the witch...you know...)and painted the base black. We had a decal of our logo and web address made at the local mall which you can see on the front of the base. After a carefully applied layer of clear lacquer to seal everything, the centerpiece was finished. Below are a few detail images as well as shots of the centerpiece in action!
Detail of the two tombstones. You can see the witch's broom in the background of the left image. The gravestones were made from boxes from Tic Tacs mints, and painted with stone-texture spraypaint. The words were inscribed with a Dremel tool.
Closeup of the mini silk flame. In the bottom corner you can see the jumbo red LED. The lens of the LED was lightly sanded to give a more diffused light. A small stiff wire holds the small piece of silk in position over the fan. Using yellow silk with a red LED produced a nice flickering between the two colors.
The guts tucked into the base. On the left is the Lyra MP3 player which provided the soundtrack as well as the trigger signals for the concealed white LEDs which simulated lightning. The circuit board in the middle is the audio amplifier, and the single speaker can be seen on the right. The centerpiece ran off of a total of 12 AA batteries divided into separate packs to the audio board, silk flames, and MP3 player individually.
The silk flames looked better in the dark, but they didn't look too bad in the light, either!
Here's a dark shot of the centerpiece with the silk flames running. The soundtrack consisted of a howling wind, rain, and occasional screams and maniacal laughter.
When thunder was heard on the soundtrack, 4 white LEDs flickered: two under the cross piece of the archway (one of which illuminated the little broomstick quite nicely) and one in each tombstone.
We were disappointed to not win the centerpiece contest, but there's always next year...