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Archive for the ‘halloween’ Category

Nov
03

The Tale of Two Wearable Game Boys

arduino, arduino due, arduino hacks, costume, game boy, halloween, Holiday Hacks, netbook Commenti disabilitati su The Tale of Two Wearable Game Boys 

boy We’re well past the time when Halloween costume submissions stop hitting the tip line, but like ever year we’re expecting a few to trickle in until at least Thanksgiving. Remember, kids: documentation is the worst part of any project.

[Troy] sent us a link to his wearable Game Boy costume. It’s exactly what you think it is: an old-school brick Game Boy that [Troy] wore around to a few parties last weekend. This one has a twist, though. There’s a laptop in there, making this Game Boy playable.

The build started off as a large cardboard box [Troy] covered with a scaled-up image of everyone’s favorite use of AA batteries. The D-pad and buttons were printed out at a local hackerspace, secured to a piece of plywood, and connected to an Arduino Due. The screen, in all its green and black glory, was taken from an old netbook. It was a widescreen display, but with a bezel around the display the only way to tell it’s not original is from the backlight.

Loaded up with Pokemon Blue, the large-scale Game Boy works like it should, enthralling guests at wherever [Troy] ended up last Friday. It also looks like a rather quick build, and something we could easily put together when we remember it next October 30th.

[Troy] wasn’t the only person with this idea. A few hours before he sent in a link to his wearable Game Boy costume, [Shawn] sent in his completely unrelated but extremely similar project. It’s a wearable brick Game Boy, a bit bigger, playing Tetris instead of Pokemon.

[Shawn]‘s build uses a cardboard box overlaid with a printout of a scaled-up Game Boy. Again, a laptop serves as the emulator and screen, input is handled by a ‘duino clone, and the buttons are slightly similar, but made out of cardboard.

Both are brilliant builds, adding a huge Game Boy to next year’s list of possible Halloween costume ideas. Videos of both below.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Holiday Hacks, nintendo gameboy hacks
Nov
03

boy We’re well past the time when Halloween costume submissions stop hitting the tip line, but like ever year we’re expecting a few to trickle in until at least Thanksgiving. Remember, kids: documentation is the worst part of any project.

[Troy] sent us a link to his wearable Game Boy costume. It’s exactly what you think it is: an old-school brick Game Boy that [Troy] wore around to a few parties last weekend. This one has a twist, though. There’s a laptop in there, making this Game Boy playable.

The build started off as a large cardboard box [Troy] covered with a scaled-up image of everyone’s favorite use of AA batteries. The D-pad and buttons were printed out at a local hackerspace, secured to a piece of plywood, and connected to an Arduino Due. The screen, in all its green and black glory, was taken from an old netbook. It was a widescreen display, but with a bezel around the display the only way to tell it’s not original is from the backlight.

Loaded up with Pokemon Blue, the large-scale Game Boy works like it should, enthralling guests at wherever [Troy] ended up last Friday. It also looks like a rather quick build, and something we could easily put together when we remember it next October 30th.

[Troy] wasn’t the only person with this idea. A few hours before he sent in a link to his wearable Game Boy costume, [Shawn] sent in his completely unrelated but extremely similar project. It’s a wearable brick Game Boy, a bit bigger, playing Tetris instead of Pokemon.

[Shawn]‘s build uses a cardboard box overlaid with a printout of a scaled-up Game Boy. Again, a laptop serves as the emulator and screen, input is handled by a ‘duino clone, and the buttons are slightly similar, but made out of cardboard.

Both are brilliant builds, adding a huge Game Boy to next year’s list of possible Halloween costume ideas. Videos of both below.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Holiday Hacks, nintendo gameboy hacks
Nov
03

boy We’re well past the time when Halloween costume submissions stop hitting the tip line, but like ever year we’re expecting a few to trickle in until at least Thanksgiving. Remember, kids: documentation is the worst part of any project.

[Troy] sent us a link to his wearable Game Boy costume. It’s exactly what you think it is: an old-school brick Game Boy that [Troy] wore around to a few parties last weekend. This one has a twist, though. There’s a laptop in there, making this Game Boy playable.

The build started off as a large cardboard box [Troy] covered with a scaled-up image of everyone’s favorite use of AA batteries. The D-pad and buttons were printed out at a local hackerspace, secured to a piece of plywood, and connected to an Arduino Due. The screen, in all its green and black glory, was taken from an old netbook. It was a widescreen display, but with a bezel around the display the only way to tell it’s not original is from the backlight.

Loaded up with Pokemon Blue, the large-scale Game Boy works like it should, enthralling guests at wherever [Troy] ended up last Friday. It also looks like a rather quick build, and something we could easily put together when we remember it next October 30th.

[Troy] wasn’t the only person with this idea. A few hours before he sent in a link to his wearable Game Boy costume, [Shawn] sent in his completely unrelated but extremely similar project. It’s a wearable brick Game Boy, a bit bigger, playing Tetris instead of Pokemon.

[Shawn]‘s build uses a cardboard box overlaid with a printout of a scaled-up Game Boy. Again, a laptop serves as the emulator and screen, input is handled by a ‘duino clone, and the buttons are slightly similar, but made out of cardboard.

Both are brilliant builds, adding a huge Game Boy to next year’s list of possible Halloween costume ideas. Videos of both below.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Holiday Hacks, nintendo gameboy hacks
Nov
03

Becoming Alina with a couple of interactive Gauntlets

Accelerometer, arduino, costume, Featured, halloween, Lilypad, sensors Commenti disabilitati su Becoming Alina with a couple of interactive Gauntlets 

hallow-lilypad

We’ve been amazed by the great projects coming up the week before Halloween on Twitter and Gplus community and still being submitted to our blog.

Leah Libresco published an Instructables about a pair of interactive gauntlets made with Arduino Lilypad:

This Halloween, I decided to be Alina Starkov from the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. In the books, she’s the one and only Sun Summoner, doing magic with light and heat.

Since those powers were beyond me, I put together a set of Arduino-controlled gauntlets instead, that would light up on gesture commands and slip under my sleeves. [This set up, with a few tweaks, would probably serve you well for Iron Man, too]

Instead of using a single position value from the accelerometer to turn the LEDs on and off, I picked two different triggers, so that it would be easy to *choose* whether I wanted my hands illuminated when they were straight out in front of me (a necessity, since I plan to host a party in these!)

lilypd-acceler

Full construction and code are available at this link, below you can see the project in action!

Ott
28

8×8 LED Arrays Make for one Creepy Animated Pumpkin

arduino hacks, halloween, Holiday Hacks, jack o lantern, led hacks, MAX7219, pumpkin eyes Commenti disabilitati su 8×8 LED Arrays Make for one Creepy Animated Pumpkin 

Arduino Pumpkin

[Michal Janyst] wrote in to tell us about a little project he made for his nephew in preparation for Halloween – a jack-o-lantern with facial expressions.

Pumpkin Eyes uses two MAX7219 LED arrays, an Arduino nano, and a USB power supply. Yeah, it’s pretty simple — but after watching the video you’ll probably want to make one too. It’s just so cute! Or creepy. We can’t decide. He’s also thrown up the code on GitHub for those interested.

Of course, if you want a bit more of an advanced project you could make a Tetris jack-o-lantern, featuring a whopping 8×16 array of LEDs embedded directly into the pumpkin… or if you’re a Halloween purist and believe electronics have no place in a pumpkin, the least you could do is make your jack-o-lantern breath fire.

It’s pretty simple, but extremely effective — so if you’re looking for some last-minute decoration ideas, this might be it!


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Holiday Hacks, led hacks
Ott
23

Control your Halloween Props with Arduino

arduino, arduino uno, Featured, Hacks, halloween Commenti disabilitati su Control your Halloween Props with Arduino 

halloween-make

Jason from Make Magazine published a video tutorial on how to create an amazing choreography hacking your Halloween props using Arduino Uno:

 

IMG_8344I worked out a system that lets you control all your animated Halloween props with a single microcontroller.

Read more on MAKE

Ott
11

Animating A Halloween Door Knocker with Digispark

arduino, Fun & Games, halloween Commenti disabilitati su Animating A Halloween Door Knocker with Digispark 

A software engineer turns a cheap $5 Halloween decoration into an animated nightmare. A Digispark development board controls the LED eyes and knocker actuator for haunting effects.
Ott
29

Peter the Cyber Pumpkin

arduino, Featured, halloween Commenti disabilitati su Peter the Cyber Pumpkin 

Peter the Cyber PumpkinBelgian maker Jan De Coster grew his own pumpkin, carved it, and built a pair of eyes that are controlled by an Arduino to move randomly. The result is cartoonish jack-o-lantern that's simple, yet full of personality.

Read more on MAKE

Ott
25

Fire Breathing Jack-O-Lantern of Death

arduino hacks, fire, halloween, Holiday Hacks, jack o lantern, Parallax, PING, pumpkin Commenti disabilitati su Fire Breathing Jack-O-Lantern of Death 

fire_pumpkin

[Rick] is at it again, this week he has conjured up an even more dangerous Halloween hack. Thankfully [Rick] has included a warning of just how dangerous this hack can be, especially if children are around. Don’t do this hack unless you know what you’re doing and you can do it safely.

For [Rick]’s number four hack of the month he gives us the Fire Breathing Jack-O-Lantern of death! This isn’t a new idea but it is a very unique and simple implementation. We always love seeing the ingenuity of hackers to repurpose existing commercial products. In this case, [Rick] uses an automated air freshener which dispenses a flammable spray for the pumpkins breath if you dare get too close, but not so close as to get burned. The trigger distance is controlled by an Arduino and a Parallax Ping))) sensor so as to fire only when people are farther than 3 feet but closer than 5 feet. You can get a copy of the Arduino sketch from his blog posting.

A small candle is used to ignite the flammable spray, which shoots out 5 to 10 inches from the pumpkin’s mouth when triggered by the ultrasonic sensor. It couldn’t be simpler. The most challenging part was getting the large air freshener dispenser in the pumpkin with the flames coming out the mouth. A little extra whacking at the pumpkin fixed the fit, but planning for a larger pumpkin would be advised.

Theoretically the Arduino shouldn’t trigger and throw flames if people are too close, but when kids are running around they may come right into the target area unexpectedly. If this hack is used in the right place it would make for a great Halloween display item and could be used safely.

After the break you can watch [Rick’s] flame breathing Jack-o-Lantern build tutorial.

If you would like to see a voice controlled dragon pumpkin that throws flames whenever somebody says “trick or treat” then checkout this Microsoft Kinect voice recognition hack .


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Holiday Hacks


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