In the movie, if the idol was removed from the stand, a mechanism would cause the entire room to self destruct. In my idol retrieval, if the boys remove the statue without placing a coin in the correct slot, a buzzer sounds.
A few months ago, Isaac and I were at a church rummage sale when he spotted a plaster Greek statue. He told me it would be great for day camp. At the time, I wasn't planning an elaborate obstacle course so it didn't interest me. After walking around the sale for a while, I told him to get the statue and figured I could do something with it somewhere. It was white plaster, but a quick coat of gold spray paint transformed it into a precious statue to retrieve.
Dode built the box for the grand finale so that they had to put a coin into one of six slots. If it was the correct slot, when they remove the idol nothing happens. If it's the wrong slot, a buzzer goes off. It's made so that which slot is the correct one can be changed.
Door alarm from Dollar Tree
6-Position Rotary Switch from Radio Shack
Fancy coin we used.
I can't believe we made it through the two days without loosing this coin in the grass. Dode had borrowed some Yen from his boss in case we needed a back up of fancy money. It's a good thing we never needed the yen because we forgot to take it to camp, it sat on the mantle.
Our Gold statue and coin. She's an "authentic" souvenir from Greece.
Her name is Kapyatie. I tried to find out who she was on the Internet but while I found lots of similar statues, I couldn't find any information about the original.
Top of statue box. Some of the arcade buttons we bought came with one and two people on them (for one player and two player arcade games). It looked like we planned to put the statue on the button doesn't it? It was just a good use of resources! The coin goes into the slot until it is half way hidden.
The underside of the box the statue sat on.
You can see the switch for changing which slot is correct on the top. Underneath that, the white circular thing is the bottom of the button the statue sits on (an arcade button we had), on the right, next to the "M" is the door alarm (the battery pack is extra to make sure we had enough power to last the entire camp). The grey part at the bottom contains the 6 slots for the coin. Wires lead to each slot.
You can see the knob on the outside for switching which slot is correct.
OK now for the details of how to wire it all together (you even get to void a warranty in the process).
If you plan to make one, you have to risk all that money you spent on the alarm ($1). You have to void the warranty on it by opening it up. It's easy, just one screw, hidden in the battery compartment. When you open it up, it will look like the picture below.
The details of how the alarm is built does not matter. The only thing you need to know is that when the two wires, shown in the picture above, are touching the alarm will be silent. As soon as you pull them apart the alarm starts sounding and will continue sounding as long as the two wires are apart. In normal use, the magnetic part that came with the alarm would be used to pull these two wires together and keep it from sounding, but we want to use our own switches to make it alarm. Trim the wires apart from each other so they can not touch each other, then solder several inches of wire onto each one. Drill a little hole in the alarm case, feed the wires through the hole and put the alarm all back together.
Now you have an alarm with two wires coming out of it. When you touch the wires together the alarm is silent and when you pull them apart it alarms. There, you voided the warranty on your expensive home security system!
Now you just need to build the box with the switches and wire it like the schematic below.
Just follow our easy directions above and you'll have yourself a great box that will alarm if the coin isn't in the correct switch!
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