Halloween Projects?
CircuitMage
Posts: 62
Here is my project this Halloween;
http://www.instructables.com/id/Motion-Sensing-Flasher-with-SFX/
No controller, but is simple and fun.
If you like it, please vote for me in the Halloween Props contest!
Anyone else working on a Halloween project here?
http://www.instructables.com/id/Motion-Sensing-Flasher-with-SFX/
No controller, but is simple and fun.
If you like it, please vote for me in the Halloween Props contest!
Anyone else working on a Halloween project here?
Comments
http://www.gadgetgangster.com/news/54-wednesday-project/507-propeller-powered-pumpkin-lights.html
OBC
I've done a couple LED projects with my kids for school projects.
1) I used an LED flasher circuit with a very large cap, that stobes the LEDs very slowly for a small pumpkin project. The LEDs were the eyes.
2) I programmed an 8 pin PIC to randomly flash 5 LEDs on a paper doll.
LEDs always draw the interest of kids.
Pictures of Trail goers. The dog was to right side of camera. I hit them with a screaming "ghost in the machine" first, then a growling jumping dog, then a pole cat, shotgun shot (camera flash) and then the big barking dog.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150512460505550.468189.830440549&type=1&l=b9d0510cc2
http://gma.yahoo.com/video/househome-26594254/calif-halloween-house-s-party-rock-anthem-27049229.html
[h=1]Calif. Halloween House's 'Party Rock Anthem'[/h]Owners of a Riverside home create a light show with pumpkins singing LMFAO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOi0q9uoRMQ
You'd have to pay good money to see me wearing this, but with the geeky glasses (3D-movie glasses), the 'costume' was a hit at the party.
Ghost Buster Reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skxhii6VFdo
...and for part of my daughters costume, she will have a 'lightning wand' derived from the movie "The Lightning Thief"- Percy Jackson ... Think Mmsic accelerometer and a bunch of high brightness white LEDs in a row. As you tilt the rod from one side to the other the 'lightning' flows like water from one end to the other with an added randomized effect to give it the illusion of turbulence. Any sudden motion immediately light's the entire wand up, where it then slowly decays and extinguishes towards the lowest point of the wand. small motions keep the handle (or lowest end) alive with random turbulent light. .... <- Pictures and video for this later
@Ron. That has me thinking of doing something similar. I built a 3 channel light controller kit for christmas. But, if I have time I can rig it for Halloween.
@Beau. MORE great ideas. I like the wand idea. Making something into a staff with a speaker for lightning blast sound effect would be epic. Lots of opportunities there.
It is hard to capture the true effect of the ghosts in the dark. The camera picks up much more of the chicken wire than is visible in the yard. One flashlight is aimed at the top half of the ghost and the other is on the lower half. The flashlights fade slowly between the two. The effect is subtle but creepy. It will build the ambiance to the final scare on the trail.
I had a couple of Homework boards in my project box so we set about writing a program that would accomplish our goal. I decided to use 2 boards to minimize the power draw. This is her project, so she learned how to wire the flashlights, hook up the plugs and sockets, and hook up the breadboard. She learned to use a multimeter to check for continuity and to check the voltages of the LEDs. She also wrote the program and downloaded it to the boards. She has other projects for the trail so I didn't have time to teach her to solder the connections, but she did like making the shrink tubing shrink around the connections.
I can post the program if people are interested.
Neil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM_jxnfespE
@Beau: That gives me an idea to use on my next project. I was planning on taking 8 or 10 flash tubes, and tie them together into a serial light blaster. Having that many flashes discharge just seems like fun. I may use some LED's along the side of the gun to show charging/discharging effects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NepGWSOuf8s
1. Awesome.
2. How did you add sound?
3. What does the housing look like?
4. The high frequency sounds get abit anoying, but still cool. A low frequency bang at the end (like thunder) when it reaches the apex would be nice.
5. The flickering really looks good.
6. The on periods seem to outweigh the off periods, which seems counter intuitive to how lightning/electricity actually happens. More offtime??
I'm just starting to YouTube my projects, so that is really good for sharing project video.
Thanks!... The sound was added based on the angle and I borrowed an old "TRON" sound discovery that I played with on the ATARI computer when I was a kid.... Basically you have two different 'voices' that are 1 Hz off from each other.... My base frequency starts out at about 50 Hz and depending on the absolute angle ranging from 0 to 90 the angle gets multiplied by 10 and added to the base 50Hz ... so the range is from 50Hz to 950Hz depending on the angle.
I wanted to keep a Halloween essence, and since my daughter is actually going as a witch I thought this sound was kind of 'witchey'
The housing is a clear plastic tube used as a sleeve to protect fluorescent lights ... For the speaker, I used a little 8 Ohm speaker that had a diameter just under the plastic tube. Resting on foam with the center punched out, the combination speaker, foam, tube made a perfect audio conductor throughout the entire tube ...<-- You can't tell which end the sound is coming from :-)
The entire wand measures 28 inches long with 20 inches of that being LED's. I used #38 wire to connect each LED <- I didn't want the wire to swamp the lighting effect so to keep it thin I used very fine enameled wire.
Video of Version #1 - original
Video of Version #2 - lower pitched (less irritating) ; slightly different sound modification
Anyhow, really nice. I like the wiring of the LEDs to the header strips.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE7wxgbQS98 <-- Video
http://hackaday.com/2011/11/04/mimicing-a-heartbeat-in-sound-and-electrical-pathways/ <-- Hackaday with links to the tumblr post which has all of the code.