Dancing santa

[jhiggins]

I have a two part question. I bought one of these inflatable dancing hula santas from home depot, and i want to control the dancing motor seperately from the light and blower motor so i can control when he dances. Has anyone done this? It looks like just a simple matter of cutting the wires that go directly to that dance motor (and capping those) and just putting on a seperate plug, but i thought id ask before i burn something up. Also, if i control the power setting from LOR to that motor, will that change the speed That he dances? Currently there is the main plug wire goes into a box on the blower and then there are two sets of wires coming out of the block for the standard 7watt bulbs, and the dance motor. I assume there is just a buss inside that block but i cant take it apart easily.

[Dennis Laff]

Before you cut any wires and rewire you need to determine if the output wires that controll the blower and lights are 110 volts or are they dc volts

[jhiggins]

they are standard ac 110v

[Dennis Laff]

Then you should be able to separate the two connections and run two separate plugs

[Christopher2113]

jhiggins did you ever try this?

If so how did it work?

I have an 8ft Olaf with dancing lights I want to do the same and the blower looks just the same

[Need more lights]

I did a blow globe pumpkin that had lights inside. I separated the lights from the blower (blower was always on to keep it inflated) and put the lights on a dissected flood light motion detector. Worked great!...same concept, just different.

[EmmienLightFan]

You need to determine if the power going to the bulb is 110v AC.

 

If it takes an ordinary light bulb then yes, you can, just attach another plug to the bulb holder and safely cover up the old wires, making sure they won't touch or come into contact with water.

It probably is not a good idea to control a blower motor with a Light-O-Rama controller. Light-O-Rama controllers use triacs and can be damaged if you try to dim a resistive device such as a motor. Also some motors pull a lot of current when they start, but this shouldn't apply to blowers as they are quite weak.

It could damage your controller, or if the blower has any electronics then these could fail if dimmed or switched regularly.

 

Also in future, please try to avoid resurrecting a thread that is quite old, just start a new one, where all the attention will be on you.