Backyard UFO Is Out Of This World

November 15, 2023 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

Halloween may be over for another year, but UFOs in your yard are cool year-round. This one might take the cake. [frydom.john]’s excellent UFO is fully programmable and contains about 2000 addressable RGB LEDs, smoke, a laser-lit ramp, and of course, an alien crew.

Under the hood of the wooden frame, you’ll find a Teensy 4.1 running the blinkenlights. There’s also a hacked smoke machine, because what’s a UFO without smoke or fog emanating from underneath? There are six PC fans to blow it around and recycle it, and the ramp runs on a linear actuator.

[frydom.john]’s project notes (PDF), which they refer to as ‘scrappy/hacky’ are also available. We beg to differ a bit on the scrappy/hacky part; it’s 60 pages long and full of photos and diagrams and charts. Even so, it may not be enough for you to replicate this extraterrestrial vehicle, so [frydom.john] is open to questions. Be sure to check this thing out after the break.

Want to have your UFO lift off of the ground? It’s possible with the Coandă effect.

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2023 Halloween Hackfest: Spooky Noise Maker Is Self-Contained

November 1, 2023 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

We just love it when y’all build off of each other’s projects. This spooky Halloween noise maker from [C.M. Herron] is no exception. But while the projects we’ve seen lately rely on external computers and/or guitar pedals to create the effects part of the build, this one has everything running on a Raspberry Pi that sits inside the box.

Readers of a certain vintage will recognize this as an 8-track storage box, on top of which are several noise-making objects that creak and ting and reverberate nicely. A USB microphone picks up the sounds, and by using a regular microphone instead of a piezo, [C.M.] can introduce varying levels of feedback to make the sounds even spookier.

So, how did [C.M.] make this work on a Pi 4? To put it simply, they’ve got the Reaper DAW and Windows Valhalla plugins running on top of WINE, which running on top of Box64, which is running on top of the Bullseye Pi OS. [C.M.] sure learned a lot from this build, and hopes to inspire others to build their own spooky noise boxen. Plus, they’ve already thought of ways to improve it for next year. Be sure to check it out in action after the break.

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2023 Halloween Hackfest: Converted Proton Pack Lights Up The Night

October 31, 2023 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

It’s really quite unfortunate that Hackaday/Supplyframe employees and their families are not allowed to place in the 2023 Halloween Hackfest, because our own [Tom Nardi] has thrown down a costume gauntlet with his kids’ proton pack conversion.

Starting with an inert off-the-shelf toy from 2021, [Tom] set out to make the thing more awesome in every way possible. For one thing, it’s blue, and outside of the short-lived animated series The Real Ghostbusters, who ever heard of a blue proton pack? So one major change was to paint it matte black and age it with the old silver rub ‘n buff technique. And of course, add all the necessary stickers.

[Tom] added plenty of blinkenlights, all running off of an Arduino Nano clone and a pair of 18650s. He got lucky with the whole power cell thing, because an 8 x 5050 RGB LED stick fits there perfectly and looks great behind a PETG diffusing lens. He also drilled out and lit up the cyclotron, because what’s a proton pack without that? There’s even a 7-segment LED voltmeter so Dad can check the power level throughout the night.

Finally, he had to do a bit of engineering to make the thing actually wearable by his daughter. A frame made of square aluminium tubing adds strength, and a new pair of padded straps make it comfortable. Be sure to check it out in action after the break.

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2023 Halloween Hackfest: Quoth The Raven, “Caww!”

October 31, 2023 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

Sometimes, projects start in somewhat unlikely places. This one began when [Istvan Raduly] scored a fake raven at a neighbor’s garage sale and decided to turn it into a thunder-and-lightning decoration that would frighten even the bravest trick-or-treater.

Get close enough to this raven and you’ll set off the PIR sensor, which triggers lighting and sound effects, including some spooky glowing and blinking red eyes, general cawing, and of course, thunder. The light comes from a whopping 10-watt, 12-volt power LED. This bird’s brain is an Arduino Nano, which is protected from the 12V supply with a boost converter. As you might expect, the sounds are on an SD card and played through a DF Player Mini.

Spookiness aside, our favorite part might be the absolutely lovely job that [Istvan] did decorating the raven’s base. Hiding electronics and hot glue is one thing, but this is above and beyond. Be sure to check it out after the break, both in the safety of the house, and outside in the scary darkness.

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2023 Halloween Hackfest: Hack Skellington Is The Life Of The Party

October 29, 2023 by Kristina Panos No comments

[Matt Vella] has had a talking, non-posable skeleton knocking around for years. As cool as that sounds, [Matt] is really tired of its three stock phrases. Fast forward to this year — [Matt] got a posable skeleton and decided to go all out on this, the hackiest of all holidays. The result? Hack Skellington.

Between the eye socket-mounted camera, the speaker, and servos in the head, jaw, and one arm, Hack Skellington is decked out to scare trick-or-treaters (or anyone who gets close enough) in modern fashion. Thanks to ChatGPT and an AI-generated voice, Hack can recognize people and welcome them by name, look people in the eye, or simply move its arm when someone gets too close.

The brains of this operation is a Radxa Zero SBC programmed in Viam, though any SBC with Wi-Fi, GPIO, I²C, and USB should work just fine. [Matt] only spent about $150 total, half of which went to the skeleton itself. Be sure to check the spooky action out after the break.

You have until 9 AM PT on Tuesday, October 31st to enter the 2023 Halloween Hackfest. Procrastinators unite! Don’t want to animate a whole skeleton? Come to think of it, a severed, animated hand is even creepier, anyway.

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2023 Halloween Hackfest: Haunted Keyboard Is Free From Ghosting

October 20, 2023 by Kristina Panos 1 Comment

This may look like another DIY mechanical keyboard, but it’s hiding a secret. [Mx. Jack Nelson] has combined Halloween and keyboards in glorious, haunted fashion. Type a line, any line into this bad boy and you get a spooky, sort of cryptic response generated by AI.

Essentially, a Raspberry Pi Pico W does all the work, it handles the keyboard matrix, connects to Wi-Fi, sends the input to ChatGPT, and spits the response out on the screen wherever the cursor happens to be. Incidentally, it turns out [Mx. Jack Nelson] used ChatGPT to generate much of the CircuitPython code.

The layout is a custom 40% that is heavily influenced by the Akko 40%, with the Ctrl, Alt, and Win keys replaced by Ctrl, Cmd, and Opt. This was [Mx. Jack Nelson]’s first PCB, and you never forget your first. You don’t want to miss the demo video after the break.

Are keyboards just not spooky enough for you? Here’s a creepy baby doll that does basically the same thing.

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2023 Halloween Hackfest: A Spooky “Severance” Speaker

October 18, 2023 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

If you know, you know. After becoming fully engrossed in the sci-fi psycho-thriller “Severance“, [Ben Brooks] absolutely needed to have a version of the ominous speaker known as the Board.

This speaker represents the Board, who is the enigmatic governing body of Lumon Industries, the fictional and gigantic biotechnology company featured in the show.

The Board cultivates an air of mystery by rarely speaking, and when it does, it speaks through a single person who paraphrases the Board’s responses. The audio that comes out is a mix of the show’s theme song, pertinent show quotes, and static.

The guts of this freaky little thing are pretty simple — an ESP8266, a DF Player Mini, and a couple of small speakers. In fact, [Ben] had all the parts leftover from a previous home automation project, including the PCB.

Although the original plan was to program it in Arduino, [Ben] ended up using ESPHome to make it easier to integrate with sensors for the big night. Be sure to check out the demo video after the break.

We’ve seen a few fun hacks for the porch this year, including the treat trough of terror and this Ouija robot that out-creeps the real thing.

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