Tech savvy peeps...help required!!

[Pear_Cider]

Hi Guys

As some of you that know me might know, I take part in pantomime at the Palace Theatre in Mansfield every year to raise funds for local charities. Our next production (Jan 2019) will be Beauty and the Beast. Those of you familiar with the story will know that a key element is a rose whose petals fall off at various intervals. We have found instructions for making a rose prop which can drop petals on cue using an app, but to us mere mortals the instructions might as well be in Swahili! I wondered if any of you wonderfully talented people out there might take a look for me and see if it's doable. Needless to say, this was done in the U.S so we would need to be sure that the parts required are available here. We need someone who is both technologically savvy and also a bit handy with DIY skills who can say, "Yes, I could make that, no problem!"

I'd be really grateful if you could let me know your thoughts folks, but please don't make the feedback too technical or I won't understand it!!

Many thanks, Trev.

Here's the link...

https://medium.com/northwest-passages/enchanted-rose-prop-5e05e19d28a

[ian the worm]

Looks easy if you get the right person to help. (Not me)  

A manual version would also work by running 4 fishing wires through a hollow pipe / tube to somewhere off-set.

Upon cue you pull one wire and the appropriate magnet retracts, dropping a petal.

No batteries or electrics or Arduinos or software needed and the audience gets the same effect. 

[Pear_Cider]

9 minutes ago, ian the worm said:

Looks easy if you get the right person to help. (Not me)  

A manual version would also work by running 4 fishing wires through a hollow pipe / tube to somewhere off-set.

Upon cue you pull one wire and the appropriate magnet retracts, dropping a petal.

No batteries or electrics or Arduinos or software needed and the audience gets the same effect. 

Thanks Ian   Sounds like a good plan. Only issue might be that we need to take the rose off stage for different scenes and then reset it. Might be a faff with wires attached. Something to think about though...cheers mate

[Pear_Cider]

@DarrenVonBoathook...these are the instructions for the rose prop for hire that I messaged you about:

 

 

[the wonderwhy]

I feel like you could save a lot of hassle by creating a relatively simple animation of a rose with petals periodically falling off, say every 15 mins, and projecting this onto something on stage. Then its just a case of covering/uncovering the projector as and when. 

Doing it on actual speech cues would be a little more work, but probably still doable 

[Pear_Cider]

Thanks Matt  We're looking at several ways of doing this at the moment. It would have to be on speech cues though so we don't have a leaf fall at the wrong time!  

Thanks for your input buddy.