www.instructables.com: I needed a small battery-powered fog machine for an upcoming project. Mains-powered foggers are not at all expensive (~$40). But a battery powered portable one is, for reasons I don't really understand, a whopping $800 (or even $1850!). There are various wimpy fog machines like the Wizard Stick (kid's toy) and the Dragon Puffer (same device, repurposed for draft-testing), that don't generate much fog and need to be held upright.
5 comments:
I read this and thought that it would be some really cool homemade project where you actually build a fog machine from scratch, instead of just putting a vape in a plastic box with a switch. While I still think the idea of this is cool, and if I have time I'd consider building it, it almost seems like you're doing no work to get the final product. After all, you could technically use a vaporizer with the same effect just a different case. Sure, this modification could be a bit better, but not much work was done here to make it a fog machine versus a vape. That said, if I get a chance it would be a cool little thing to build, and it seems like little work is required.
I have a lot of mixed emotions about battery powered items in productions. My initial thought is that they are truly magical. They can very discreetly provide power to something creating that “theater magic” effect that a cord can not. However, the cost of replacing the batteries of a single unit over the course of a long running show can get fairly high very quickly, and rechargeable batteries can occasionally be faulty. Clearly there are pros and cons. A battery powered fog machine will definitely provide a whole new range of new things and opportunities for designers. What does surprise me the most, is that no one has come up with this yet. I would have thought that someone had already invented one of these, and sold them to a ton of people. I guess that I think technology has not has progressed as far as I think it has.
I swear to god, Halloween brings out the most creative and ridiculous types of projects. Firstly, the fact that this author just decided to build himself a mini fog machine is beyond me. Also that he went directly to e-cigarettes was way too clever, especially when he figured out that regular fog fluid can be put in the devices. The only thing I can think of to make this project more advanced is to just buy a more expensive and nicer vaporizer so you don’t have to worry about overheating and burning through fluid too fast, more fog, more fun. The author also did a good job with the instructable, but I will admit, with limited electrical knowledge, I feel that some of the wiring might get me confused, but maybe not. Halloween is definitely the time to do these kinds of projects, and I was even thinking of 3D printing my own mask this year, working with Ben Carter to 3D scan my face and contour the mask around it perfectly.
It's just like Full Monty, but even smaller! I think going the electronic cigarette route was a pretty smart idea for a fogger this small. I guess I'm not super familiar with e-cigs, but it would not have crossed my mind that you could just load one up with fogger fluid. The 3d printed enclosure was pretty slick, although relatively unnecessary if you have a carpentry shop available but not a 3d printer.
For Full Monty we were able to just take a crappy DJ fogger and put a battery and power inverter inline in order to drive a "Mains" fogger off of a battery. Although a lot of the electrical connections were comically kluged together, the system did work out relatively okay in the end. The whole system was relatively cheap as well! Car inverters and lead acid batteries are ridiculously cheap, as well as Chauvet DJ foggers. Definitely a path to contemplate if you are looking into "Battery-fying" regular corded devices.
This is really awesome! For this he basically just left the e-cig in one piece, but I am wondering if you could add multiple vaporizers onto one battery and create a denser cloud faster. Depending on how well you could hack these together I could see it being an awesome way to add atmospheric effects to costumes and props with a whole series of vaporizers and nozzles along their paths. For some reason, I can't stop thinking about the possible health risks of these fog machines now. I had always considered the little hobby grade fog machines to be relatively safe to be around because I believed the fog juice to be non toxic. However, I have avoided E-Cigs in part because I was worried about the safety of inhaling the chemicals that make up the base of the juice. I will have to do more research now to figure out which opinion is more accurate.
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