Pill Bottle Prop Trigger

As I worked on various props I found that I needed an easy way to test triggers. I also wanted to find a way to make it easy for an actor to find the activation switch for a prop while making such a trigger small enough to be relatively invisible in their hand. Since I had a bunch of old pill bottles laying around (don't ask) :) I used a fist-sized bottle, a few connectors and some push button switches from radio shack, and I came up with some very reliable triggers that are super easy to make. (Note: All images are "clickable" for hi-res)

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The first time I made one of these I used 1/8" connectors on a pigtail (about 3-4 feet long) and tied a knot in the cable inside the bottle to keep the stress off the solder joins. I then used a 1/8" headphone extension cord between the trigger and the prop. Unfortunately, the cable would tend to get unplugged at the "join" between the extension cord and the male 1/8" plug, so I moved on to design #2

In design #2, I decided to place a chassis mount RCA connector on the other end of the button. This had added versatility in that I could substitue a NO button for a NC simply by changing the unit at the end of the plug:

As a possible improvement for this, I could add a small LED inside the pill bottle to make the button easier to find if it gets dropped by the actor. This idea came up when the actor operating the Monster in a box prop dropped the remote for operating the prop AND the remote for the smoke machine! Since the smoke machine remote had a "ready" neon indicator he was able to quickly recover it, where with the pill bottle he had to hunt around on the floor. I suppose if I had sufficient current across the button, I could simply parallel an LED with the button to make the bottle glow. If I do this I'll try to post updated pics. :)

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