halloween

190 Articles

Old CRT Television playing Luigi's Mansion on a rusted out bike (Original Photo by Anete Lusina)

Luigi’s Mansion First Person Mod Brings Spooky New Perspective

October 28, 2022 by 2 Comments

The Nintendo GameCube in many ways defied expectations. It was purple, it had buttons shaped like beans, and it didn’t launch with a Mario game. What we got instead was the horror-adjacent ghost adventure game starring Mario’s brother — Luigi’s Mansion. The game was a graphical showpiece for the time, however, the camera angles were all fixed like an early Resident Evil game. Not satisfied with playing within those bounds, modder [Sky Bluigi] created a first person camera patch for the game that finally let players see why Luigi was so freaked out all the time.

The patch dubbed Luigi’s Mansion FPO (First Person Optimized) does a lot to drive home the game’s child-friendly, spooky aesthetic. Along with the ability to explore environments with a new lens, it provides the ability to turn the flashlight on and off manually if you want. Though the most impressive part of Luigi’s Mansion FPO is that it runs on real hardware. All that’s needed to play the mod is clean image of the North American release of Luigi’s Mansion and a .xdelta patching utility like Delta Patcher. GameCube games can be ripped directly to a USB thumb drive using a soft-modded Nintendo Wii console running Clean Rip or similar backup tool.

Luigi’s Mansion FPO actually provides a collection of patches that offer revised controls and increased field of view depending on which patch is used. The original game had inverted controls for aiming Luigi’s ghost vacuum, so the “Invert C-Stick Controls” patch will install a more modern aiming scheme where up on the right stick will aim upwards and vice versa. The “Better FOV” pulls the camera a little further back from where Luigi’s head would be while the original aiming scheme is retained. Though no matter which patch you decide to go with, a mod like this is always a good excuse to revisit a cult classic.

For another fresh GameCube mod check out this post about a Raspberry Pi Pico based modchip for the system.

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Build This Halloween-Themed TensEGGrity Sculpture

October 21, 2022 by 5 Comments

Tensegrity sculptures are fun things, and often sold as office desk toys or scientific novelties. You can build your own too, and [seabirdhh] has whipped up a fun holiday-themed version.

The first part to build is the egg-hat-stand. This consists of the base of the structure, with the “hat” of the egg character hanging in the center. The other half of the structure is built separately, with the rest of the “egg head” sitting in a cup in the bottom of the upper structure. A series of nylon threads are then tied between the components. These can then be tensioned to give the structure its shape, allowing the egg’s “hat” to hover above its “head”. [seabirdhh] passes the nylon threads through small pieces of rubber that allow the tension to be adjusted just right. Too little and the structure falls down, but too much, and it will bend over time. Tuning it carefully is key.

It’s a fun build, and a cheap way to experiment with tensegrity concepts at home. You can even use these same techniques to build a quadcopter, or apply them in the world of LEGO. Video after the break.

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Spooky, Scary Skeleton Is Pi Pico Powered

October 13, 2022 by 2 Comments

It’s the spookiest time of year once again, and hackers across the globe are cobbling together some spine-chilling projects. [Kevin] is amongst them, and has created a spooky, scary skeleton just in time for Halloween.

The project works in a relatively simple fashion: essentially, a Raspberry Pi Pico is charged with reading an HC-SR04 ultrasonic rangefinder. It’s all wrapped up in a 3D-printed skull-like housing. When the skeleton detects someone or something close in front, the Pi triggers a small servo hooked up to a 3D-printed gear. This interfaces with a pair of racks which drive the skull’s eyebrows up and down, and opens and shuts its jaw.

Of course, there are some major anatomical problems here. Skulls don’t have eyebrows; that’s just not possible. Eyebrows are hair attached to flesh and muscle; they simply don’t exist in the world of bone. However, it’s fair to say [Kevin]’s taking creative license for the sake of the holiday, and we can all support that.

This is a basic build, and a fun one. It would be an excellent way to learn some basic microcontroller skills, while also serving as a great little Halloween charm to scare guests going back to the fridge for another beverage.

We get a cavalcade of quality holiday hacks every year around this time. This year should be no exception – so get your spooktacular hacks into the tips line, post-haste! Video after the break.

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Halloween Mirror Offers A Mighty Fright

August 16, 2022 by 22 Comments

Jump scares are controversial in the horror world, whether you’re talking about movies or video games. You can bring that same irritating thrill into real life, too, with this Halloween mirror from [jasonwinfieldnz].

During the day, or simply when it’s bright inside, the mirror appears normal, like any other. However, behind the special two-way mirrored glass surface is a spooky 3D print, such as a skull or an annoying yellow cartoon character. When the lighting level gets low, everything changes. A light-dependent resistor hooked up to a Digispark detects the change, and then fires up some 5V LEDs to light the scary image, revealing it behind the mirror. Even better, it plays a loud screaming sound with the help of a DFplayer MP3 module.

We’d love to see the concept taken even further, too. It would be quite something if, when a passer-by approached, the room lights suddenly cut out and the mirror activated in its full glory.

We’ve seen some great Halloween builds over the years. If you’re eager to get one out this season, you might wanna get hacking now! Video after the break.

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Children playing a zombie shooting game on a big screen

Halloween Game Lets You Shoot Zombies With A Laser-Powered Crossbow

November 12, 2021 by 1 Comment

Suppose you were looking for all the essential elements to make a great Halloween-themed shooting game. Zombies? Check. Giant “lasers”? Check. Crossbows shooting forks? We’ve got you covered. Check out “Fork The Zombies“, which was set up by [piles.of.spam] to entertain the neighborhood kids this Halloween.

The game is played on a big screen, which shows a horde of angry zombies marching toward the player, who has to shoot as many as possible before they reach the front of the screen. The weapon provided is a crossbow; when the trigger is pulled, a fork is launched and hopefully skewers one of the ghouls. The game was written using an open-source engine called Urho3D, which takes care of all the hard-core 3D and physics work, allowing the user to focus on designing the gameplay and visuals.

A wooden crossbow game controllerTo give the game a bit more of a physical feel, [piles.of.spam] made an actual crossbow for the player to wield. Its handle was cut from a scrap piece of wood, using a band saw for the general shape and a CNC machine for the delicate cut-outs that hold a laser pointer, an ESP32 and a microswitch-based trigger. The laser shines onto the game screen, while the ESP32 sends out a data packet over WiFi when the trigger is pulled.

The location of the shot is tracked using a clever trick: a webcam is pointed at the screen, with a red color filter in front. This way, it only sees the red laser dot moving across the screen. The resulting image is processed using the Python OpenCV library, which provides functions to convert the relative motion of the pointer on the screen to an absolute position along the playing field.

A webcam on top of a Jetson Nano, with a red color filter in frontThe computing hardware consists of a pair of Jetson Nano boards, which sport quad-core ARM A57 CPUs as well as powerful graphics hardware to generate the game’s visuals. The end result is impressive, especially given the fact that all of this was designed and built in just three weeks. It was apparently a great hit with its intended audience, as visitors queued to try their hand at shooting the hungry zombies.

Laser pointers are an obvious tool for creating shooting games: we’ve seen ones with a single round target, a set of shapes set up around you, and even metal cans that fall over and stand up again. But if you need to protect yourself in case of an actual zombie apocalypse, a slingshot that shoots knives might be more useful.

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Halloween Hack Requires Minimum Code, Produces Maximum Fun

November 7, 2021 by 11 Comments

Every year, [Conor O’Neill] hacks something together to spook and entertain trick-or-treaters who happen by his home on Halloween. He’s noticed a pattern — every year the project involves a mess of code, often slapped together using different frameworks and languages. Attempting to alleviate that, and maybe make things a bit more friendly to beginners who understandably find code-intensive project daunting, this year he set out to write as little code as possible.

Rather than take the electronics-only route, which would undoubtedly include a few 555 timers and some other classics, [Conor] elected to stick with higher-level embedded boards, including fan-favorites such as an ESP32 and a Raspberry Pi, while still trying to keep code to a minimum. Thanks to the visual languages Espruino Blockly and NODE-RED, he only needed to write a couple lines of “traditional code,” as he calls it: a simple JavaScript HTTP request. The project itself consisted of an ultrasonic sensor hooked up to an ESP32, which would detect when children approached the door. The ESP32 used Espruino visual scripting to notify a Raspberry Pi when it sensed motion. The Raspberry Pi would play some spooky sounds, and coordinate with some old conference badges to turn on some lights and trigger a fog machine. The Pi also used a service called Tines to send a door notification via Telegram.

Okay, so this is still by no means simple, but it is interesting how much can be done without writing much code (and the end result was great!). [Conor] says he’s been building similar Halloween projects every year for the last ten or so, and it shows — we wrote about another one of his haunted doorbells back in 2015. We’re looking forward to seeing what he cooks up next year, and we hope you’ll have some awesome automated Halloween decorations as well!

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Spooky Winners Of The Halloween Hackfest Contest

November 4, 2021 by No comments

It was a tight race, but the results of the Halloween Hackfest contest are in. We asked you to scare up a terrifying build in one of three categories, and as usual, you didn’t disappoint! These three hackers have each won a $150 shopping spree at Digi-Key to fund their future frights.

Best Undead Tech: 3-Axis Skull Mod for a 12-Foot Skeleton

Nelson Bairos

Skelly the 12-ft Home Depot skeleton comes alive with servos.[Nelson] has been in the Halloween-based animatronics business for more than a decade, but always gets beaten to the punch when it comes to doing the really fun stuff like making things move and speak. Once [Nelson] got their hands on a 12-foot skeleton from the big box hardware store, it was time for the gloves to come off and the fun to begin.

The three axes of movement come from a rotation servo, a tilt servo, and a nod servo, all of which are connected to each other and the skeleton with 3D-printed supports. Lucky for us, [Nelson] documented this first build quite nicely and provided the 3D models, should you suddenly get the urge to go see if they have any of these magnificent skeletons left on clearance.

Best Haunted Smart House: Safety Coffin Grave Bell

Glen Atkins

What’s scarier than the undead? How about people who were buried alive, whether accidentally or not. Can you imagine hanging around in a graveyard, innocently doing tombstone rubbings or some ritualistic sacrifice when suddenly you hear someone ringing a bell and/or a terrified, muddled voice screaming for help?

[Glen Atkins]’ Safety Coffin Grave Bell build forgoes the body part, but in the dark, it’s easy to let your imagination run wild. It looks like a bell on a post, but pass too close and the ultrasonic rangefinder detects unsuspecting trick-or-treaters and gives them a scare by frantically ringing the bell with a big servo hidden inside. We hope they brought spare underwear.

Best Crazy Costume: Computer Head

Skye Rutan-bedard

Holloween costume with an old computer screen for the head[Skye] won a lot of people over last year with their computer head costume that featured a lone blinking eye and a voice. What those people didn’t know was that it suffered from three big problems: it had poor ergonomics from a heavy monitor shell, the blinkenlights matrix used to display emotions was underutilized, and using a keyboard proved to be an inconvenient UI for running the voice. This year, [Skye] set out to fix all the problems and make the costume even more awesome and comfortable to wear.

The brain of this computer head costume is a Raspberry Pi 4. As for [Skye]’s actual head, it is safely enclosed inside a hard hat that’s epoxied to the inside of the case. A wide range of emotions dance across the 16×16 RGB LED matrix that looks great behind some mirrored film, and they go great with the new voice method — [Skye] speaks softly into a small microphone, and the Raspi uses Mozilla’s DeepSpeech to repeat whatever they say in a robotic British accent.

Hack-y Halloween

Congratulations to all the winners, and a big thank you to all 45 entrants for your hair-raising hacks. Thank you also to Adafruit and Digi-Key for sponsoring this contest. We hope you had a great Halloween!