Snow Machine advice

[JohnF]

Hi all,

So this year, I successfully managed to add a dmx controlled Snow machine to my display, so I get flurries of snow at select points in songs. I am really pleased with how this is working, but after burning through 5 litres of Snow fluid in first 3 days, I have realised that as we are fairly rural in UK and don't get massive crowds every night, I should try and be a bit more conservative with the snow usage. Ideally I would have the snow enabled when there are people watching but not if the show is playing and no-one out there. Has anyone got any ideas on how that could be achieved?

Thanks

John

[Oliver Blatt]

I know this sounds silly, but can you just unplug power from the snow machine when people aren’t there? The show will run as normal, but no snow. The other option (not sure how your snow machine works. The one I use does not have a “warm up” time) would be to put a motion sensor that turns on power to the snow machine. The. If people are there, it’ll snow...if not, no snow!

[JohnF]

Unplugging isn’t an option as I’m not there a lot of the time (show starts whilst I am at work) hmm, motion sensor could work though, I have never used one, but wondering if possible to have 2 or 3 set up covering the area outside the fence and have it switch on if at least one of them detects motion...

[Oliver Blatt]

I don't have too much experience with motion sensors, but the one application I've used them, it always seemed like the beam spread was too wide! I was constantly trying to keep things from triggering! I'm not sure how wide of an area you need to cover, but I'm sure motion sensors work.

[JohnF]

Cool thanks, I will have an experiment with one this weekend 😀👍👍