Announcing Our Next Theme: Halloween Hacks

October 11, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

It seems every year, Hack A Day is a little bit behind the times when it comes to Halloween hacks. Builds like the Mario costumes and the house singing Thriller are great, but it makes a lot more sense for us to post them before Halloween.

To introduce our Halloween theme, we’d like to present [heavyweighthowe]’s Halloween project. It’s a small lighting automation build that syncs a string of lights to the theme of the ~~best~~ ~~Halloween~~ ~~Christmas~~ 2nd best [Tim Burton] movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas. [heavyweighthowe] used Vixen to sequence the lights and an Arduino to interpret the serial commands from Vixen. It’s a nice build that would look great sitting on a porch next to a giant bowl of candy.

If you’ve got a Halloween build you’d like to show off, like a haunted house ride an awesome costume or even a really great Jack-O-Lantern, send it in on the tip line. We’re planning on putting up at least one Halloween post a day, so keep sending in those builds.

ATtiny Hacks: Robot Halloween Costume

September 24, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

When it comes to Halloween costumes, [Michael] doesn’t like buying expensive and poorly made bits of cloth and fabric that resembles [random Disney character]. Last year, his son decided to be a robot for Halloween and although gray spray paint and dryer vent hose make a very good costume, that only goes so far. The robot needed lights, so [Michael] spent a little time on this build that blinks a few LEDs in a random pattern.

The build is very simple; an ATtiny13 drives two 74HC595 shift registers. The code – all 30-odd lines of it – uses the random() function to shift high or low values to the shift registers. After pausing for a little bit, the cycle continues and a new patterns of LEDs light up.

The electronics of the robot costume could be easily transferred to another theme – astronauts need LEDs on their backpack, and of course aliens communicate with blinking lights. In any event, it would avoid last year’s fiasco with a dozen [Heath Ledger] Jokers. Check out the video of [Michael]’s intergalactic robot son after the break.

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Halloween House Has Been Known To Burst Into Song

November 1, 2010 by Greg R. Jacobs 24 Comments

Just a day after Halloween and a replacement for Michael Jackson has been found, in the form of a very talented musical house. Not only does this house come close to a Michael Jackson dance routine but can mimic the voice quite well. The house has also been known to do the Monster Mash as well as Sandstorm (Techno) by Darude. YouTube’s KJ92508 has uploaded his Halloween conquests for all to enjoy. As of yet, he has not made a how to or even done a walk through video in broad daylight but here is to hoping he will due to numerous requests for a sneak peak. He has mentioned that he used “4 singing pumpkin faces, tombstones, hand carved and blow mold pumpkins, strobes, floods and thousands of lights.” I look forward to what is in store for next years decor. Just another example of what technology in everyday life and a little elbow grease can do. Be sure to check out the video of “Thriller” as done by this house after the break.

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Even More Halloween Links

October 31, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

We know you just got a links post a couple hours ago, but more people tipped us off to some great Halloween stuff and we just couldn’t wait.

[Michael] came up with this fantastic idea for a flying ghost. He’s using a twin prop tilt rotor design to fly his ghost all over the neighborhood. It has a camera mounted on board and the footage is both fascinating and, toward the end, quite funny. Nothing beats chasing children down the street in first person from a flying ghost.

[Trey] wrote in to show off his 47 foot wide spider. He made it himself out of black painters plastic that he heat welded together using a heat gun. In the video you can see his victim, a dummy mounted on a salvaged rotissierie.

[Floe] has been thinking about this one for quite some time. He finally decided to build his flame throwing jack-o-lantern, a concept we approve of. Using two servos, one to start a pilot light and one to spray a travel deodorant, it is pretty simple. He used a ceramic jack-o-lantern so it would be sturdy enough, and marginally less flammable.

Here’s a safer Jack-o-lantern for you. [Paul] wrote in to show us his LED synchronized Jack-o-lanterns. While they may not be ground breaking, we just love seeing that logo out in the wild. Maybe we’re just egotistical, maybe those toothpicks just brought back fond memories. Why didn’t we ever run that Jack-0-lantern carving contest? Oh well, maybe next year. You can see a video of it in action after we get it uploaded correctly to our youtube channel.

70 LED Matrix In A Jack-o-lantern

October 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

What takes eight hours to solder and uses more shrink tubing that you thought imaginable? An LED matrix installed in a real pumpkin. When I mentioned that we’d like the LED pumpkin in last Friday’s post scaled up to a full LED matrix I had no idea it would be me doing the work. But [Caleb] and I thought it might be just the thing to present for the hacker’s favorite holiday.

Installed in the autumn vegetable is a marquee made from a 5×14 matrix of light emitting diodes. I spaced them by printing out a grid on the computer, taping it to the pumpkin, and drilling 70 holes in the front of the thing. The real trouble came when inserting all of the LEDs from the inside; each of them has four wires soldered to it, creating a net of black wiring. Above you can see it turned out great. This is a shot of it scrolling the message HAPPY HALLOWEEN.

Join us after the break for video of this prop. But we’re not just sharing the finished product. I’ll take you through the build process. Along the way you’ll learn the design considerations that go into an LED matrix and how you can use these techniques to build your own in any size and configuration you desire.

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Portal…shirt?

October 26, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 29 Comments

[Ben Heck] is in the Halloween spirit with his Portal inspired “see through” t-shirt. That is, a thin lcd is mounted on [Ben’s] chest, with a not as thin camera mounted on his back; when the system is running, everything behind him is captured by the camera and displayed on the LCD. The concept isn’t exactly new by any means, often by the name of “gaping holes” or “hole through body” or more, but the project goes to show that a creative costume isn’t always the most elaborate, expensive, or even a new idea. Catch a video of how to make your own Portal shirt, after the jump. Oh, and you can win the Portal shirt here.

[via The Daily What]

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Creepy HDD Activity Lights Just In Time For Halloween

October 11, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

We almost skimmed right past this spooky HDD activity light thinking it was just another set of LEDs wired to the motherboard. However, they explained right off that they didn’t want just another blinking light on their case. They wanted it to change its intensity smoothly based on hard drive activity. While there are a million ways this could have been over engineered, we think they did a pretty good job of simplifying the circuit. The bill of materials is pretty much just a handful of resistors, LEDs, an opto isolator, and a capacitor. The effect, is quite nice and can be seen in the video after the break.

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