Animatronic Winged Demon Terrorizes Local Garage

October 16, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 11 Comments

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Halloween is on its way, and if you’re going to do it right, you’re going to overdo it right. A few days ago we showed you [Jake’s] flying Crank Ghost, the idea is simple and creates lovely motion that is sure to scare some small children. But what if you want people leaving your little shop of horrors needing a new pair of pants? Meet the Animatronic Winged Demon by [Woody]. Very little info is given except for the touch screen controller, the central control system, and his unique use of a modular skeleton, but the project is very impressive none the less. If the demon doesn’t scare you, take a look at the miles of wires needed to control it. Check out a video after the break.

[via HackedGadgets] Continue reading “Animatronic Winged Demon Terrorizes Local Garage” →

A Modular Halloween With Grid Beam

October 8, 2009 by Phil Burgess 3 Comments

gridbeam

The fantastic Creatrope blog has a great article on quickly assembling animatronic Halloween gags using salvaged electric motors, pvc pipe, and “grid beam” construction.

Grid beam is a prototyping and building medium that’s like a giant hippie Erector set. You can’t buy grid beam, but with a drill press, a jig, and some square stock you can create your own unlimited supply. It’s ideal for “sketching” and temporary constructions like these Halloween props. After use, everything can be dismantled, stored flat, and later reused for the next [Herbie Hancock] music video creative project. Looks like fun!

The article wraps up with some valuable pointers on getting started with grid beam and where to acquire parts.

Scare ’em Silly With A Moving Pumpkin

October 7, 2009 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

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Halloween is a scary time for the little ones. It’s dark, they can barely see through their injection molded Spiderman masks, but it’s all worth it for the candy.

Our friends over at Evil Mad Scientist Labs have produced a pumpkin that moves on its own. The little pumpkin was disemboweled from the bottom and its guts were replaced by a simple robot. Three Lego wheels provide this base with one attached to a continuous rotation servo that provides the motion. The device is powered by 3 AAA batteries and powered by an Atmel ATtiny2313 microcontroller. For added terror there are two green LEDs that act as ghoulish eyes.

We’ve embedded the video of the Rovin Pumpkin in action after the break. This is a wonderfully simple way to spice up your front porch decorations on All Hallows’ Eve. Continue reading “Scare ’em Silly With A Moving Pumpkin” →

Halloween Prop: Bigmouth Billy Bass

October 6, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

Back in 2001, the Bigmouth billy bass was still relatively new. Hacking one to record and play back both audio and movement was quite a new feat. You can read all about how they pulled it off. Though most of us agree that this could be done easier now, with off the shelf microcontrollers, this is a great example of constructing your own system to fit the need. We’ve seen a similar hack done very recently with an mbed microcontroller.

Halloween Props: Low Cost Popup

October 5, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 3 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJoedH9thds]

[Backroads] has put together this nicely detailed writeup explaining how to make a low cost popup prop. He’s using a single pneumatic valve and a home made PVC piston to raise and lower a scary mask. He’s using an off-the-shelf 110v AC valve controller to control the valve. A flickering light, a “screamer” and a fog machine help fill out the project. The result is quite nice. We would be tempted to put a pressure sensor in front of it to optimize the scare timing.

Quoth The Raven: Hack Some More

October 3, 2009 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

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There are people who buy a cheap sack of candy and dutifully answer the door on Halloween. Then there are people like [Peter] who spend the whole year planning for the next year’s Hollywood-style front yard theatrics.

He added an animatronic raven to his show a few years back. It has been wildly popular and it’s not hard to see why. The bird is well engineered, well built, and the performance is very realistic. [Peter], who is an FX supervisor in the film industry, has posted a build log that takes us through step by step. This creepy performer can move its head up and down, side-to-side, and even rotate at the neck. This all happens while the beak synchronizes with talking. We marvel at the precision machining that was done to make the frame facilitate movement.

The body itself is made of fiberglass covered with feathers. [Peter] covered the completed mechanics with clay in order to sculpt the final body shape. This was used as the mold by covering it with fiberglass release and then fiberglass fabric. This process produced a very light weight and accurate shell with a minimum of effort; something we’ll keep in mind for future projects.

Take a look at a bit of video after the break. You can see the whole show from past years over at [Peter’s] site. We’ll be doing a couple of follow-ups covering his animatronic skeleton (the raven’s partner in crime) as well as the interface he uses to control and sync the voices to stay tuned! Continue reading “Quoth The Raven: Hack Some More” →

Halloween Prop: Portable Black Light

October 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

blacklight

[Joshua] wrote in to show us this great Halloween tip. He wanted to take his 4 foot long black light along with him on Halloween. You can buy portable versions, but he realized he had enough parts laying around to slap together a portable one himself. He pulled the inverter from a scanner light and wired it up to a couple of 9 volt batteries. Knowing he would probably need a fresh set during the night, he actually wired in some extras with a switch to control which was powering the unit. We know this isn’t the best solution, but you could probably toss this together in just a few minutes.