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Wireless firework ignitor! Early? Yes! Cool? Yes!

justinthemodder

I thought I would post this now So people could either love or hate this in time. I thought that it would be cool for Ben to make a wireless firework igniter (electric lighter) for the 4th of July? Maybe? One that costs less than the commercially available one of $500!

 

                                        Justin

  • My cousin and I built a wireless setup about 3 years ago. It uses a single 255 channel wireless receiver board and a custom PC software interface. which was far cry from my 16ch single wire prototype the year before. Just last year we added (14) 8ch mini receivers to the setup. I've attached a photo of the miniRX-8 and some links to our family's forth of July fireworks display.

     

    image

  • you could use two micros and two UART radios, the receiver could have high side driver that connects a charged capacitor to a ematch that would then ignite the fuse of a fire cracker. This is very similar to a project I am involved in but in our case we release parachutes instead of setting of fire crackers. If you want more info (pats and how to connect them) let me know and I will try put something together for you.

  • There are several such projects floating around on the Internet that use the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and other single board computers to launch fireworks, if that is what you are looking for.  You could build it pretty cheap if you don't get too elaborate with the hardware.  Heck, I have seen them built with a cardboard chassis, tupperware chassis (a bit of an ESD nightmare),  a prototyping breadboard thrown in a box, components mounted to a wooden board, etc.  Whatever is fast and cheap I guess.   A great place to get some ideas is from the "Firing System" section of the following forum, where along with the commercial units, people post their home made fireworks launchers.  There is also a wealth of information about fusing techniques, nichrome wire technical data, wiring schematics, etc.:

     

    Pyro Universe

  • in reply to Former Member

    Ah Linx, I've used their radios before.  Not the cheapest in town but definitely easy.  Are you using the encoder/decoder with it as well?  Or did you roll your own protocol?

  • in reply to colecago

    Kept the data protocol simple. The transmitter sends a single byte of data for the active channel. The mini-receiver only decodes the last 4 bits out to the 8 outputs via gates and the upper bits are manually set via switches. Linx products are little pricey but made the whole process easier. Didn't have to use a microcontroller on the receiver at all.


  • in reply to Former Member

    Impressive this looks like you are in time for the next Godzilla movie image

     

    What ignitor system do you use ...most people I know just massively overload a low wattage resistor and get good results!

  • in reply to Problemchild

    BTW some guys in the Edinburgh hackerspace were building a system it may be worth a look around their site for information

  • in reply to Problemchild

    Thinking about it what responsibility does the manufacturer of these devices even at an amateur level have to the correct functioning of these ignitors. Are you horribly liable if your device has a misfire or a failure ?

  • Here is the website of the wireless fireworks igniter that I built for the Fourth of July last year.  Probably out of the low cost price range you are looking for, but it could be done cheaper; it might give you some ideas:

     

    http://www.flaminghellmet.com/launch/

     

    image

     

    You could also get a commercial small 12 cue wireless firing systems from Phoenix for about $100.

  • in reply to Problemchild

    Thats exactly what I use. 10ohm 1/8w resisters burn up great at 12V, lots of heat and a flame. I've used/tried commercial ignites(expensive), thin copper wire(easy to break), and nichrome wire(hard to work with) but resistors are very cheap and easy to work with, you can get 100 of them for less then $3.00 From digikey, http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/CF18JT10R0/CF18JT10R0CT-ND/2022697

     

    To increase the reliability of ignition you can dip resistors in E-match compound from Skylighter  http://www.skylighter.com/electric-match-kit.htm