Metroid helmet takes Halloween costuming to a higher level

October 23, 2012 By 18 Comments

Hackaday writer [Ryan Fitzpatrick], aka [PlatinumFungi], recently put together this amazing Metroid Power Suit helmet as a prop for a [Mike n Gary], on youtube. How amazing is it? This image is an actual photograph of the helmet! It’s being modeled by [Kelly Johnson], who built a power suit costume for a previous Halloween. But she never made a helmet, which makes sense to us. After all, how are you supposed to talk to anyone while wearing a helmet? Practicality aside, it is a delight to walk through the fabrication process.

[Ryan] started with a motorcycle helmet, making paper templates based on images from the game. After he had a reasonable road map for the work that needed to be done he started cutting away the parts which he didn’t need. The ‘beak’ on the front was then fabricated from paperboard, with the fins on the side sculpted from rigid foam. But there’s still a lot of work to be done from that point. Sure, the internal lighting and colored visor are necessary touches, but it’s the paint job and ‘distressing’ steps that make this look so realistic.

Looks like we’ve exceeded his bandwidth due to the tons of pictures he had of the process. Check out the video after the break.

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Filed Under: Holiday Hacks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Halloween Light Show Gets an Upgrade

October 22, 2012 By 6 Comments

This is [Dave]‘s second year of putting on a Halloween light show (cache), and his latest production has received some upgrades over last year’s Christmas show. He’s switched from Christmas style bulb lights to high brightness LEDs, and upgraded to 48 channels of control.

The controllers are from Light-O-Rama, and each provides 16 output channels. They communicate over RS-485; the same type of network used for controlling professional theater lights with the DMX512 protocol. The whole thing is powered by a 20 A DC supply from some Chinese retailer.

[Dave]‘s show features light up pumpkins, tombstones, and faces mounted on his house. The lights are coordinated to a list of songs that he plays over an FM transmitter, allowing for cars to tune into the music that’s synced up with the lights.

If  you happen to be in Estacada, OR, you might want to head over to [Dave]‘s and check out the show in person. Otherwise, there’s two videos of the light show after the break.

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Filed Under: led hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Halloween Props: Spooky eyes light up the bushes

October 19, 2012 By 11 Comments

This is just one example of several pairs of spooky eyes which light up [Vato Supreme's] bushes this Halloween. The quick and inexpensive build process make it a perfect diy decoration.

Each eye is made up of a ping-pong ball and an LED. But that alone won’t be very spook as the entire ball will glow rather brightly. So he spiced things up a bit by masking off the shape of a pupil and spraying the balls black. The vertical slit seen in white above will glow red like a demon in the night.

The LEDs are driven by an ATtiny85 running the Arduino bootloader. [Vato] found there was plenty of space two write code which fades the eyes in and out using PWM. This happens at random intervals for each of the four pairs he is driving.

We’ve seen a similar project that used oversized LEDs as the eyes. But we really like the idea of using a diffuser like this one. See it in action after the break.

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Filed Under: Holiday Hacks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Dinosaur hoodie to remind you Halloween approaches!!

September 14, 2012 By 3 Comments

[Tom's] dinosaur hoodie would make a bang up Halloween costume. It’s a glowing version of the bony plates you’d find on a Stegosaurus. Not only does it look great at night, you should be able to put one together or yourself in an afternoon.

He used a laser cutter to make the translucent fins, but it would not be hard to cut them all out by hand. Each piece is two sides of the plate connected by a narrow rectangle which leaves room inside for an RGB module. These are chained together and controlled by an Arduino (most likely using SPI or I2C, we’re not sure which), then sewn on the back of a hoodie.

Update: [Matt] made a derivative of this design. The plates are pointy like a stegosaurus.

Send in those Halloween projects

Which reminds us… Halloween quickly approaches and we haven’t seen the usual onslaught of awesome. We love this time of year because of the ingenuity that comes out to play in the costumes, yard decor, and scare tactics being prepared for the big night. Please send a link to your project and we’ll start pumping out the holiday features.

To get you thinking, here’s a set of folding wings used in a costume, and a possessed powerwheels to chase down the little ones. Don’t sit on your hands, we want to hear about every project!

Filed Under: Holiday Hacks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Candy chucker – weapon, or advanced Halloween delivery system?

November 9, 2011 By 10 Comments

Now we know why kids in this neighborhood wear plastic Halloween masks instead of just painting their faces. They’re trying to protect themselves from the onslaught of hard candy spewing out the front of this candy chucking pumpkin.

The mechanism operates very much like a baseball or football throwing device. Now that we think of it, it’s also the same concept as the chicken launcher. There is a feed shoot that drops the projectile into the grips of two spinning chuckers. Those chuckers are built out of a couple of fans, with layers of fabric to account for different sizes and shapes of candy.

The video after the break shows some test firing. We love the sickening ‘whap!’ that the Werther’s Original (or whatever crappy Halloween offering they’re using) makes when it slams into the wall of the room.

This thing’s just begging to be mounted on a parade float, don’t you think?

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Halloween Hacks: An evil R/C clown car for terrorizing the neighborhood

November 5, 2011 By 4 Comments

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terrifying-clown-car

If you had a few too many trick or treaters hitting up your house this year, [phwillys] has a solution guaranteed to keep them from coming back. He was looking for a way to scare the crap out of the trick or treaters this past Halloween, so he constructed a remote-controlled evil jeep to terrorize the neighborhood.

The jeep was built from an old PowerWheels car, and uses a bunch of different motors to get the effect [phwillys] was looking for. He bought a linear actuator on eBay to let him steer the jeep, which is controlled using some motor controllers he had left over from another project. A salvaged car window motor was used to allow evil clown driver to turn from side to side in his seat, while a pair of car seat motors activate the giant claws built into the sides of the vehicle. The jeep’s hood was even turned into a chomping mouth with large teeth using yet another small motor.
[phwillys] also added a water sprayer to the clown’s mouth, soaking any kids in the immediate vicinity, though he was nice enough to mount a leaf blower on the opposite side of the vehicle to help blow them dry.

It really is an awesome creation, we’re sure the neighborhood kids (and parents) got a big kick out of it. Continue reading to see a short video of his scary clown car in action.

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Filed Under: Holiday Hacks, robots hacks Tagged With: , ,

Halloween Hacks: Motion sensing fog machine

November 4, 2011 By 6 Comments

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[monkeysinacan] wanted to add a fog machine to his Halloween display, but he says that the cheaper consumer-grade models are pretty unruly beasts. He cites short duty cycles and tricky fog control as his two biggest gripes with these sorts of foggers. He decided make the fogging process a little more manageable, and modified his to only generate fog when someone was walking nearby.

One obvious concern with this sort of setup is the warm-up time required to get the device ready to produce fog. If it were to only turn on when someone walked by, [monkeysinacan] would miss his mark each and every time. To ensure that his machine was accurate, he rigged it so that the heat exchanger stayed powered on, triggering the fog juice pump as needed.

To do this, he used an ultrasonic sensor similar to, but cheaper than a Parallax Ping unit. Paired with an Arduino, the sensor triggers the fog machine’s pump for 20 seconds whenever anyone gets within 6 feet of it.

While he hasn’t posted video of the modified fogger at work, it sounds like a solid plan to us.

Filed Under: Arduino Hacks, Holiday Hacks Tagged With: , , , ,
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