Candy in a 35mm film container is launched towards a trick-or-treater when they step on a foot pedal 50 feet away from the launcher.
Type: Education
Website: https://hackaday.io/project/175206-halloween-candy-mortar
We love the paper air rocket launcher this is based on. We pull it out for birthdays and school events. With COVID, it seemed like a good idea to come up with a social distancing trick-or-treating solution.
Candy in a 35mm film container is launched towards a trick-or-treater when they step on a foot pedal 50 feet away from the launcher. A Paper Air Rocket launcher built several years ago was repurposed. It uses PVC pipe, a cheap electric sprinkler valve and two 9 Volt batteries in series connected to a push button switch and a foot pedal switch. Both the push button hand switch, held by the operator, and the pedal switch, used by the trick-or-treater, must be pushed together to launch the candy. The air chamber is made of 2" PVC. A small electric air compressor set to 27.5 PSI charges the PVC tank. The launch tube is 1.5" inside diameter PVC pipe which is a perfect fit for the film containers. Two containers, each containing a small chocolate bar and a glow stick, can be launched at once a distance of about 45'. The intent is to have the candy land on the grass in front of the trick-or-treater. The canisters are fairly light and do not hit the ground very hard.
I prefer building projects over documenting them :). Video production and editing are hard. Additional features may not be worth the time. Considered a wireless foot pedal and a parachute for the candy, but they were difficult to implement.
It was ridiculous but it was lot of fun and everyone really enjoyed using it.