A Tesla Coil That Delivers Shocking Candy

November 8, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

shocking-candy-tesla-coil

Even though Halloween was a week ago, we are still seeing plenty of cool stuff coming our way. Take for instance this Tesla coil that [JJ] sent us.

He got the idea to build a coil for his Halloween display about a week before the event, but he figured it would be easy enough to do since he had a lot of the parts on hand already. He originally started with some neon transformers and a primary/secondary pair he used in a previous Tesla coil build, but when things were fully assembled he wasn’t completely happy with the results.

He returned to the drawing board, winding a new primary/secondary coil pair, which performed much better. The rest of the coil was pieced together with random parts he procured at IKEA along with other items he had sitting around.

He donned a mad scientist’s outfit, and with a large set of grounded tongs acting as a Faraday cage he proceeded to electrocute trick or treaters’ candy with his Tesla coil, much to the delight of the neighborhood children.

Be sure to swing by his page to see more construction details, and for a sneak peek at the candy zapping process, check out the video below.

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Hacking A “magic Wand” To Remotely Control Light Displays

November 7, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

Hackaday reader [Kieran] volunteers at an outdoor haunted house attraction called the “Disenchanted Forest”. Attendees are lead through the haunted forest by a volunteer, who helps keep everyone on the predetermined trail. The trail is usually lit by small LED fixtures that the group constructed, but the organizers wanted to make the lights more interactive this time around.

A fellow organizer gave [Kieran] a [Harry Potter] Magic Candle, which allows him to light the toy with the wave of his IR-enabled wand. He was told to “make it do something cool”, so he took a closer look at it to determine how everything worked.

Using an Arduino clone and some borrowed IR code he was able to get the wand to work with the forest’s trail lighting, but there was a lot of lag between waving the wand and triggering the light. Taking a second stab at it, [Kieran] was able to replicate the IR protocol used by the toy, speeding things up and increasing the wand’s range considerably. Now, the tour guides can light and extinguish the trail lighting with a simple flick of the wrist.

Take a look at the video below to see how things worked out for [Kieran], and be sure to swing by his site for more details if you have the urge to modify your Magic Candle.

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Amazingly Realistic Skeleton Prop

November 1, 2011 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[Cjmekeel] spent weeks getting his Halloween display ready this year. The centerpiece of his offering is this full-sized motorized skeleton. But there’s a few other gems that he worked on to compliment it. There’s an old-fashioned radio whose dial moves mysteriously and plays a news flash warning of an escaped mental patient. He also spent a couple of dollars to outfit a crow with some glowing red eyes and a servo motor.

But the creepiness of the skeleton means you might not even notice those other props. He started with a rather boring looking plain plastic head and did some real magic to build up the rotting flesh and gaping wounds. Those penetrating eyes don’t hurt either. The head moves on a few servo motors which use random values and sleep periods for disturbingly jerky movements. Check out the video after the break to get a glimpse at what kept kids away from his house on Halloween.

This is just a build log and unfortunately there’s no post yet showing the finished product. If we can get enough information together we’ll try to run a follow-up.

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Skeleton Does A Looney Tunes Style Song And Dance

November 1, 2011 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

[Kevin Harrington] throws a curve ball with this skeleton in a coffin. Instead of going for the cheap scare, he conjures memories of old cartoons when the bony figure puts on a song and dance. When activated it leans forward to hang out of the coffin donning a tattered tuxedo and top hat. You can hear the servos working as they give jerky yet realistic motion to the tune “Hello! Ma Baby” in the true Michigan J. Frog style. Classic!

He figures it took about $36 in parts to put the skeleton together plus the DyIO module to control it from a PC. Four servos are used in total, connected to the skeleton with some steel cable. Connecting it via a computer makes it a bit easier to synchronize music with motion than just using a microcontroller capable of playing back audio would have been. Code is available from the site linked at the top, and a demo video is embedded after the break.

This would also have been possible by using an Arduino as a DMX controller.

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Crawling Zombie Is Shockingly Creepy

October 27, 2011 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

When [Mark] sent in the tip about this crawling zombie prop he said that it didn’t sound scary but warned us that it is terrifying when you see it. He’s absolutely right, the video after the break shows some remarkably undead movement from the thing.

This crawler is actually radio controlled. Details are brief, but there’s plenty of pictures and the start of a build tutorial for the hardware. A wood frame serves as collar-bone and spine for the zombie. Attached to the spine are two motors which allow independent shoulder operation. We’d wager that the realistic movements are due to a talented operator at the controls, but it can’t be too hard to master if you play around with it for a while. It looks like the initial build was headless, but we think the addition of the zombie head really makes finishes out the project!

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[Vigo’s] Stare Follows You Wherever You Go

October 27, 2011 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

To decorate the office for Halloween [Eric] decided to make [Vigo the Carpathian] stare at passersby. We hope that readers recognize this image, but for those younger hackers who don’t, this painting of [Vigo] played an important part in the classic film Ghostbusters II.

In the movie, his eyes appeared to be following anyone looking at the painting. [Eric] grabbed a Kinect and used Processing to recreate the effect in real life. The image is displayed on an LCD screen. A bit of work with Photoshop allowed him to cut out the eyes from the image, then create sprites which are moved by the Processing sketch. It’s reading data from the Kinect (so it knows where to ‘look’) which you can see perched on the top of the cubicle wall. The illusion is delightful, see for yourself in the clip after the break. We’ve already watched it a half-dozen times, and it looks like it was a real hit with the guests at the open house.

Can you believe they threw this together in just one day?

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Halloween Time Machine Simulator Built Into An Outhouse

October 26, 2011 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[Sam] is an avid Halloween builder and has been hard at work on a time-machine simulator for this year’s festivities (alternate link). He recently assembled the enclosure which is seen above. It’s got room for two riders who will be strapped in place, with plenty of interior items to keep them occupied. There will be three LCD monitors acting as front and side windows for the time machine.

In the video after the break (taken from his vblog on the page linked above) [Sam] walks us through all of the electronics that went into this. He’s got red lights controlled by a servo motor attached to a dimmer switch. There’s a vibrating seat to give the riders a jolt, and a control panel which shows the status of the time machine. The thing is, it’s not just the physical build that’s impressive. We know from his past projects that [Sam] is a showman and he doesn’t disappoint this year. He spent a lot of time filming and generating computer graphics and sound to really make the ride a multimedia odyssey.

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