Convert Your Battery-Operated Halloween Prop to AC/DC Power: Never Replace Batteries Again!

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Tired of your favorite Halloween props dimming too soon? Wish you could enjoy that eerie ambiance without the constant need for battery replacements? In this video, I'll guide you step-by-step through converting your battery-operated Halloween props to run on an AC/DC adapter. No more mid-party battery swaps or dimmed-out decorations; just continuous, spine-chilling glow and sound effects throughout the spooky season. Plus, I'll share beginner tips on best practices, identifying and connecting wires as well as troubleshooting your battery-power to AC power conversions if the need arises.
Full Tutorial ▶︎ racheldebarros.com/how-to-con...
Video Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:50 Can I Damage My Prop?
1:12 Prop Demo with Batteries
1:49 Cover Panel Removal
3:06 How to Choose a Power Adapter
7:10 Amps vs. Volts (at a buffet)
7:51 Identifying Positive & Negative Wires
9:00 Wiring the Power Adapter: Option 1
9:30 Wiring the Power Adapter: Option 2 (recommended)
9:57 Testing Connections Before Soldering
10:41 Soldering the Positive Wire
12:44 Soldering the Negative Wire
14:02 Wiring the Female Adapter
14:19 Plugging in the Prop
14:39 Hiding the Female Adapter
15:45 Final Test
16:09 Wrap Up
Build Along:
🛒 Battery Replacement Adapters: amzn.to/3Q7mQop
🛒 Soldering Pen Kit: amzn.to/3QapZnv
🛒 Universal Power Adapter: amzn.to/3tM7IFL
🛒 Heat Gun: amzn.to/40d6xuT
🛒 Female DC Jack Adapter: amzn.to/3QvgJfe
🛒 22-gauge Hook Up Wire: amzn.to/4060qZn
🛒 Heat Shrink Tubing: amzn.to/3S5y3IS
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#animatronics #halloweenanimatronics #halloweenprops #propmaking #propmaker #animatronicprops

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30 июн 2024

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Комментарии : 19

@bryanhenderson9637 9 месяцев назад

Seriously, you need to find a way to bottle up your energy and sell it on the home shopping network or something. Love it!!

@Microwave_Dave 9 месяцев назад

If your gadget uses 3 or 4 AA or AAA batteries in series for 4.5V-6V it should work just fine powered from a cheap 5V USB phone charger or power bank. The "nominal voltage" of Alkaline cells is 1.5V but new batteries often start around 1.65V (1.2V for rechargeables) then produce usable power down to around 1V, so battery powered gadgets are designed to operate over a wide range of voltages as battery voltage starts high then drops with use. Just cut the end off a USB charging cable, strip the red(+) and black(-) wires then join them onto the battery terminals. Small gadgets with no moving parts usually work fine with cheap USB cables, but look for better quality thicker wire USB cables for higher powered gadgets with motors. Depending on the current (Amperage) requirements you may even be able to convert some gadgets requiring C or D batteries to USB, but they might require more power than a typical USB charger can supply. You can check power requirements using a multimeter.

@user-zv3lj1ef7l 4 месяца назад

I love your comedy - i use two sets of glasses to read certain things too. 😂 I'm just learning how to use an arduino for the first time and your channel is great for that. I look forward to more mini tutorials.

@airhammer6203 9 месяцев назад

Good stuff Rachel. I've done this little project a number of times. It's always great to see you and just "tinkering" on things.

@alyoungcuda 9 месяцев назад

Looking Beautiful as Always ❤

@DBB-KE5DUO 9 месяцев назад

Great edit job, Rachel!

@lgallant2486 9 месяцев назад

Hey Rachel, I’m more of a “watts” buffet guy! 😮Love your humor as always! 😂

@somethingnonsense5389 6 месяцев назад

Nice video! Just came across it because i was looking for new things for halloween! I would like to offer my solution for powering props which is less intrusive. First I got a hold of a bag of dummy batteries. They are plastic hollow "batteries" that have a wire in them connecting the positive and negative terminals. So for this prop you have, you'd get 3 aa type ones. Open one up, cut the wire in it, solder a USB wire to each terminal and close it again. Then you only have to make a small cut in the battery cover, stick 2 unchanged and one with the cables in and viola. To actually power the props, i go with 2 methods. One is to run a speaker wire by every prop that has 12V on it from a big PC power supply. Then for every prop, i connect a dc-dc converter to that to drop it down to around 5V. You lose some voltage over long wires so this way there's always enough power to get 4.5 to 5V Others i do have a USB charger, but i do add a 1N4007 diode in series to drop that power just a little so no magic smoke ever shows.

@RachelDeBarrosLive 6 месяцев назад

Great ideas!

@dennisd4452 9 месяцев назад

Your skills are awesome Rachel. Hello from Chicago.

@haywardhaunter2620 7 месяцев назад

Great demonstration. While it is important not to feed more voltage than the circuit is designed to handle, it's possible (even likely) that a slightly higher 5-volt power adapter (which is usually much easier to find than a 4.5-volt one) would be fine in this case. Alkaline cells, like AA, are nominally 1.5 V, but a brand new one may be as high as 1.65 V, so three brand new batteries could give 4.95 V, and thus the circuit has to be able to tolerate that. Any circuit that runs from batteries either has parts that can handle some reasonable range in voltage or has onboard voltage regulation. So, yeah, don't connect a 9V or 12V supply to a toy or prop that typically uses three AA batteries, but a regulated 5V supply (which is super common in USB chargers) it probably fine. By the way, the connector on the wire from the power adapter is actually the female, and the screw-terminal one you're using is the male. I know, I know, it seems backwards. Though not entirely standardized, the convention is to have the positive voltage on the center connector, and that's the one that determines the "sex" of the connector. A barrel connector has more in common with a turducken than mammalian reproductive organs. I generally go with "plug" and "socket", but even those can be confusing.

@user-go9oq7mv8t 9 месяцев назад

Awesome 👌 👏 👍

@louiepauda6275 9 месяцев назад

You were saying Volt or amp! I much prefer a sastaining current!

@rctcjc28 8 месяцев назад

Great video & info, thank you for that. Question though I probably messed up somewhere, it came on before batteries but in testing I messed up somewhere. Is there a way to diagnose what may be the problem. It doesn't come on now with the batteries. Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.

@ashantimundy7603 2 месяца назад

Lol😂😂u so funny make more videos 🥰🥰🥰

@halfbeardsilvertongue5129 8 месяцев назад

Mi'lady, I like your simplified way of explaing how to do this conversion, but I am put off and a little leery of it because of how un-aware you seem to be of the other wire locations to your work. The blue wires getting burned and the circuit board wire which looks to be burned right at the circuit board on your second soldering job. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have known how to do this conversion without a lot of research, but maybe you could be a shade more careful? This may have been a fluke, so I will watch some more of your videos because I like your ideas, if not the execution. 🙂

@MeepChangeling 9 месяцев назад

FOr the love of all that is holy: "it can take all the amps you want" is true, within reason. DO NOT do something like hook it into a truck battery. 800 amps @ 4.5 v assuming standard cheep proper copper wire = 12 watts of power = melted cheep electronics. Like literally melted. YOu will light those wires on fire.

@lgallant2486 9 месяцев назад

What she meant was that the prop circuit will only draw the amount of current it requires to operate. Overvoltage is the killer if there is no regulator in the circuit.

@RachelDeBarrosLive 8 месяцев назад

Since these are recorded as a live stream for members and then edited down, I do tend to get carried away with my explanations with the group 🤣