Halloween 2017

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That's right, I'm starting one. Mostly because I was trapped inside during Harvey, and I got started on props. I think this year, I'm primarily focused on improving what I've done. At least for now. This is what I've done so far:

  1. Taught my animatronic pumpkins 3 new songs. This is tedious work, which involves framing out the animation by hand using software that looks very similar to music editing software. Here's version 0.1 of the pumpkins, by the way:

    So far, I have Monster Mash, This is Halloween, Thriller, and Nightmare on my Street. More to come if I have time.
  2. Replaced the accompanying light show relays with optocoupler/triac combos to get a better response time and get rid of the immersion breaking clicking. Actually, I made a general purpose solid state relay board for future reuse.
  3. Replaced the laptop required to run the show with a Raspberry Pi. I kept an ancient Windows XP laptop that was on its last legs just to run this show, but it was so unreliable. I changed instead to a Raspberry PI with a web interface I can control with my phone. Now it all fits nicely in a box.
  4. "Upgraded" my interactive Stranger Things jack-o-lantern

    I pulled out the Arduino Pro Mini, and replaced it with just a plain old ATtiny85 (small microcontroller IC). Granted, the Pro Mini was like 3 bucks and the 85 about a buck, but it's the principle of the thing. Why use a jackhammer when a tack hammer is enough?
  5. Projector ghost upgrade. Last year, I had an Apple TV projecting ghost videos from one of those ghost DVDs onto black mesh. This year, I'm getting rid of the Apple TV in favor of a 99 cent Raspberry Pi Zero. I also set it up to switch to one of the jump scare videos when a motion sensor (PIR) is triggered. The DVD has wandering ghost videos and the same ghosts jumping out to scare you. I just have a command line video player jump to a scare shot when the IR sensor registers. I'll let you know how that one turns out. Not sure how well it will work, because the Zero is a bit slow. It works, but there's a noticeable delay in the video switch right now. Will post a video soon.


Probably the biggest "upgrade" is that I'm no longer running this from my front yard. Because our neighborhood has a festival on the other side of a major street (Memorial), no one ever comes here to trick-or-treat. So this year, I'm donating my services and props to the charity haunted house in the festival. It's all volunteer, and the proceeds go to good places.
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

Speaking of which, I was just playing the Halloween theme song on my phone without speakers and the entire campground got very very quiet....
 
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Staff member


I thought I panned down to capture it, but I'm waving my hand in front of the motion sensor to make the jump scare happen.

I think this one will be my Instructables Halloween contest entry this year.[DOUBLEPOST=1504463291,1504463125][/DOUBLEPOST]On the final version, I will use a black background and autostart the script so that there's nothing on screen in the gaps between the videos.
 
phil

phil

Me and my girlfriend should be moved into her grandma's house by then. This will be my first real opportunity to decorate a yard on my own so I'm pretty excited about it!
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

Huh. I have literally 0 idea of the trick or treating scene around where I live now.

Guess I better stock up now.

And each subsequent week.
 
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Staff member
Here's my Raspberry Pi ghosts. The weirdest convergent evolution thing is happening. There are two other extremely similar projects in this year's Instructable's Halloween contest. I don't know why. I've had this Pi Zero for a couple of years--picked it up for 99 cents. Just looked at the projector and realized I could use the Pi Zero as the player and make it interactive. Guess everyone else did too.

https://www.instructables.com/id/Motion-Sensitive-Projected-Ghosts-Using-Raspberry-/

Please vote for me in the Halloween Contest if you like it! Please. Pretty please. With a cherry on top.[DOUBLEPOST=1507648790,1507648600][/DOUBLEPOST]Alright, I just got "featured" on Instructables.
 
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Staff member
I'm about to post another instructable. I was playing with a audio driven skull I built last year, mostly from this site: http://www.scary-terry.com/audioservo/audioservo.htm
I added a pre-amp and a mic to the project there, and I made it work off of a USB battery (which was the hardest part, actually, because those things have an auto-off you have to defeat without burning up all the power in the battery.

So I figured, why stop there? I made it into a full costume with false shoulders and arms. I was going to do mechanical hands, but I didn't have enough spare parts for that, and the objective was to buy nothing new except glue sticks. So now I've got an 8' tall grim reaper costume with like a 10' wingspan with a skull that opens and closes with my voice. Originally, I had the arms extendable using drawer rails from an old Ikea dresser, but I had to get rid of those. They're not very strong outside of the dresser, and I slung one to pieces trying to open the arms Wolverine style. Because the best feature was that the rails were designed to lock closed normally. But after vacuuming up ball bearings, I decided I'd just use static arms. Will post soon, but in the meantime, here's the diagram I made for the costume frame:
skelly.jpg


EDIT: And yes, I had all those PVC pieces sitting around from a previous project. It was a mosquito net frame for my son's boy scout camp, but he never used it. He didn't even take it the last 2 years.
 
IronBrig4

IronBrig4

I'm not carving a jack o'lantern here. My experience with Halloween in Texas suggests that we'll get another heat wave and the whole thing will turn into pudding after two days.
 
Dei

Dei

IronBrig4 said:
I'm not carving a jack o'lantern here. My experience with Halloween in Texas suggests that we'll get another heat wave and the whole thing will turn into pudding after two days.
Click to expand...
The sun in Colorado is usually so intense that I wait until the last minute to carve pumpkins then throw them out the day after Halloween.
 
IronBrig4

IronBrig4

Every year....

I'm just going to give each trick-or-treater a candy bar and a razorblade, and tell them to put it together themselves. I don't have the time this Halloween.
 
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Staff member
Get a long wig and go with it. Because you know, that rug really brings the costume together.
 
IronBrig4

IronBrig4

I went to the haunted house in Downtown Bryan. It was pretty good for such a small venue. The Haunted Hotel in San Diego is still the best one I've been to because they chase you around with real chainsaws, but I recognize that San Diego has more resources than BCS.
 
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