3D printed tea cup and saucer with the edges made out of 3d printed human teeth. Cup is sitting on a wooden table.

Relax And Have A Nice Cup Of Teeth

October 9, 2022 by Abe Connelly 28 Comments

Halloween is just around the corner and what better way to add a little spooky decor than to 3D print [DaveMakesStuff]’s Teeth Cup.

It looks like [DaveMakesStuff] has done the equivalent of “kit bashing” by taking 3D models of a full teeth set and merging them with a tea cup. Details are pretty light but a Twitter thread (Nitter)has some clues about the process. The cup looks like it can be done in one print, support free. The smooth finish comes from bead blasting it which, as an added bonus in this case, provides the “dirty” look as the bead blaster is only normally used on nylon SLS prints.

Halloween is always a good source of inspiration for hacker projects and we’ve had many good entries from Halloween Hackfests of the past.

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Raspberry Raven Pi Security Camera Does Double Duty

November 3, 2020 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

The worst thing about holiday decorations is that while you could leave them up all year, your neighbors probably won’t like you very much for it. Christmas lights on your house are one thing, but as far as Halloween decorations go, [MisterM]’s raven security camera is one of the few exceptions to this rule.

Nevermore will [MisterM] wonder who goes there. As soon as this raven lays its beady red LED eyes on whatever is lurking in the garden, it comes to life with a bit of head swiveling and some random sounds. The bird either goes CAW! or quotes Christopher Lee’s reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”.

Inside this bird’s chest cavity is a Raspberry Pi 2 and standard camera, a servo to swivel the head, and an audio amplifier and speaker. This bird is running MotionEye on top of the Raspi OS so it can run a script whenever it senses motion.

We like that [MisterM] was able to find right-sized bits of plastic to mount the servo in the neck and the horn to the head. It just goes to show that not everything needs a 3D printer, a CNC, or woodworking. Check out the scary demo after the break.

Want to scare the whole neighborhood? Check out the science behind good-looking house projections.

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Mini Millennium Falcon Is Envy Of The Neighborhood

November 3, 2017 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

Here’s a tip for any readers who may be expecting a child in the near future: there’s about a two year period where you can basically use your child as a Halloween prop. They’re too young to express any serious interest in what they want to dress up as, and as an added bonus, they generally spend most of their time being rolled around in a wheeled contraption anyway. As long as you can keep the little one warm and securely seated in the thing, you’ve essentially got free reign to put them into all sorts of elaborate vehicles.

Case in point, the awesome build that [shnatko] has dubbed the “Millennium Flyer”. Built atop his daughter’s plastic Radio Flyer wagon, the Millennium Flyer is constructed out of wood and foam board. By using the mounting holes in the wagon originally intended for an optional canopy, the ship itself can be removed to fly again next year.

[shnatko] notes that he possess no particular talent for the fine arts, so he decided to skin his build by printing out a high resolution image of the Millennium Falcon he found online. The amount of patience (not to mention printer ink) that this method took is considerable, but we think the final results speak for themselves.

To finish off his build [shnatko] found a blue cold cathode light from his PC modding days and rigged it up with a laptop battery he had laying around. Some foam ribs and wax paper to diffuse the light give it that iconic look from the “real” Falcon.

Between this build and the AT-AT rocking horse from a few weeks back, it seems we are in the golden age of childhood Star Wars conveyances. Though we wouldn’t mind seeing this get mounted to a racing Power Wheels either.

Alas, Poor Yorick! He Hath Not Amazon Prime

October 25, 2017 by Al Williams 15 Comments

If you are looking around for a Halloween project, you might consider The Yorick Project from [ViennaMike]. As you can see in the video below, it marries a Raspberry Pi acting as an Amazon Alexa with an animatronic skull.

This isn’t the most technically demanding project, but it has a lot of potential for further hacking. The project includes a USB microphone, a servo controller, and an audio servo driver board. It looks like the audio servo board is controlling the jaw movement and based on the video, we wondered if you might do better running it completely in software.

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Industrial Indicator Makes The Move From PLC To FPGA

April 9, 2017 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Industrial controls are fun to use in a build because they’re just so — well, industrial. They’re chunky and built to take a beating, both from the operating environment and the users. They’re often power guzzlers, though, so knowing how to convert an industrial indicator for microcontroller use might be a handy skill to have.

Having decided that an Allen-Bradley cluster indicator worked with the aesthetic of his project, a Halloween prop of some sort, [Glen] set about dissecting the controls. Industrial indicators usually make that a simple task so that they can be configured for different voltages in the field, and it turned out that the easiest approach to replacing the power-hungry incandescent bulbs with LEDs was to build a tiny PCB to fit inside the four-color lens.

The uniquely shaped board ended up being too small for even series resistors for the LEDs, so a separate driver board was also fabbed. The driver board is set up to allow a single 5-volt supply and logic levels of 3.3-volt or 5-volt, making the indicator compatible with just about anything. The finished product lends a suitably sinister look to the prop.

If you’re not familiar with the programmable logic controllers such an indicator would be used with in the field, then maybe you should try running Pong on a PLC for a little background.

A Scary Pumpkin Pi

October 31, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 2 Comments

What do you get when you combine motion sensors , a Raspberry Pi, and a pumpkin? When it’s Haloween, a headless scarecrow with a light-up carved pumpkin in its lap! The execution of this hack is really great, and the resulting effect, as shown in the video after the break, should be extremely scary to any kids that come knocking.

One neat effect of this hack is that it uses X10 home automation modules to turn off the porch lights for an extra scary effect. After this, the jack-o-lantern lights up and says “help me!” If you’d like to duplicate, or build on this hack, instructions are provided as well as source code for everything on the page. While you’re there, be sure to poke around on [Insentricity] as there are quite a few other hacks available for your perusal! Don’t forget sure to send us any other Halloween hacks that you come up with.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtaxgfQZSm4%5D

Halloween Props: Monster In A Box

October 30, 2012 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

This furry Halloween decoration proves to be a simple build, but it’s still quite popular with the little ones. [Chris] had a Halloween party for a group of 2-5 year olds and this monster that peeks out of a box was a huge hit. The trick really isn’t in the complexity of the build, but in the interactivity.

The enclosure is just a shoe box which has been covered in synthetic black fur. The lid was hinged on the back, and a hobby servo with a bit of an extension on the arm is used to lift the front which reveals the monster’s paper eyes. Inside you’ll find an Arduino, breadboard, and battery pack. It’s not visible above, but a distance sensor on the front of the box is monitored by the Arduino. When it detects something in front of it the servo fires up and pops open the lid. The firmware includes a timer so that the monster waits a bit before taking its next peek at the party.