Halloween props

35 Articles

Hacky Thanksgiving

November 4, 2009 by 7 Comments

hackey_thanksgiving

Friends, pilgrims, send us your hacks. Most especially, your Thanksgiving hacks. We had a wonderful time over the past six weeks collecting and highlighting your Halloween props and now it’s on to the next holiday. Did you build your own deep fried turkey rig with some special features? How about that pie making robot you built for last year’s celebration?  Can’t live without your twittering cornucopia? Document it and send it to our tip line! All Thanksgiving themed hacks will be considered but only the well documented and creative entries will be featured.

If you just joined us, here’s a roundup of the Halloween Props we encountered this year:

disclaimer: boiling oil is dangerous, that’s why it used to be used for torture. Always consider your own safety!

[Turkey photo source]

Piecax The Poltergeist Reinvents The Knock Block

October 27, 2009 by 13 Comments

piecax-the-poltergeist

[AndyGadget] built a haunted box as part of his Halloween preparations. This follows in the footsteps of the Knock Block we saw earlier this month but makes several hardware changes. He’s replaced the solenoid with a DC motor that rotates an arm to do the knocking. He’s avoided any CNC work by using a softwood box from a craft store as the enclosure. For control circuitry he’s used an 8-pin PICAXE Microcontroller that ‘listens’ for knocking on the box via a piezo buzzer. It will mimic knocks back to you, and if it hears the right combination The Addams Family theme song is played. This useless machine will make a great office conversation piece and with this simplified design it’s much easier to build than the Knock Block. See it perform after the break.

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Halloween Props: Alien Costume

October 26, 2009 by 13 Comments

alien

[creatrope] sent in this slick Alien costume that he made for his son. The costume does look decent, but not professional. For something tossed together from parts around the house, it looks fantastic. The real kicker, is the fact that it has the retractable inner mouth. The retractable mechanism is constructed from Legos and extends when his son opens the mouth. We think he did a fantastic job with this costume, but if you’re looking for something a little more polished, check out this Alien made by [Asy0uw1sh ] you can see a little more detail on how it works here.

Halloween Props: Pie Of Sauron

October 25, 2009 by 12 Comments

pie-of-sauron

[Richard] combined creative carving with vacuum tube electronics for a unique pumpkin offering. He used the stencil-and-cut method of carving, making use of an inexpensive carving kit for great results. He salvaged an LED module from a flashlight to provide the internal illumination, but it’s the center feature that we like the best. [Richard’s] used a glow-transfer counting tube, or dekatron, which provides something like a circular cylon eye to the project. There’s a video of this after the break.

You might not have access to a wicked-looking dekatron but we’re guessing you’ve got a microcontroller and some LEDs lying around that can serve as a stand-in for one night. We’d love to do a reader jack-o-lantern roundup, so if you build something, send us a picture!

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Halloween Props: Skeleton Springs From Coffin

October 23, 2009 by 7 Comments

skeleton-from-coffin

[Tony’s] trying to scare the kids again this Halloween. This year’s creation is a skeleton that springs up from a coffin. His creepy coffin is built from plywood and in the classic style it gets narrower at each end. Inside, there’s a full-sized rubber skeleton affixed to a 2×4. Pneumatic rams are used to lift the lid and spring forth the skeleton from the dead.

He’s planned his performance well. The finished system uses a fog machine and looped audio for ambiance. A motion sensor detects innocent victims approaching, kills the music, opens the coffin lid, and adjusts the lighting. The coffin is right next to the door so when the doorbell is pushed and the skeleton springs upright this should scare the bejesus out of you. See how effective this in the video after the break. Continue reading “Halloween Props: Skeleton Springs From Coffin” →

Halloween Prop: DIY Fog Machine

October 15, 2009 by 30 Comments

diy-fog-machine

Reader [Daniel] told us about a video detailing how to make your own fog machine. This project uses two disposable roasting pans to create a fog chamber. Inside you will find an upside-down clothes iron to convert fog liquid into a gas. The liquid is gravity-fed from a water-bottle reservoir on top, converted to smoke by the hot iron, then the newly created smoke is directed out of the chamber by a 12 volt fan.

You probably have an old iron sitting around (especially if you use the toner transfer method for making PCBs), as well as a fan of some type. The build method used in the video is not at the level we usually look for. Using one blade of a pair of scissors is not what we recommend for stripping wire insulation. We also don’t advocate hot gluing a wire to a battery for a reliable connection (for that you’d want wire glue). But with better building techniques, and perhaps an air intake fan for better fog direction, this has potential.

The project is predicated on the availability of “fog juice”. We’re probably not going to head out and buy a bottle of that so look into making some yourself from glycerin and demineralized water.

Halloween Props: Flying Crank Ghost

October 13, 2009 by 5 Comments

flying-crank-ghost

[Jake’s] projects have become regular features here on Hack a Day. He keeps the Halloween hack-fest rolling with his Flying Crank Ghost. For the ghost he used a store-bought skull but sculpted some hands himself out of Styrofoam. The body is fashioned from coat hangers with a bit of creepy fabric draped over the hole thing to complete the look.

He added some very convincing motion to the ghoul using a salvaged microwave turntable motor. The motor is mounted in the center of a two crossed boards, and has an armature attached to it. Three strands of monofilament attach to the end of the armature, run through eyelets on the ends of the crossed boards, then attach to the head, and each arm. When the motor is turned on, the armature turns, moving the head and hands up and down at different rates. Take a look at the embedded video after the break to see the final product.

[Jake] does mention that the motor he used is a bit underpowered. We figure this only needs to hold up for one night, so dig through your junk bin and see if you can throw one of these together in a few hours.

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