Seven Singularly Spooktacular Maker Tools to Spice up Your DIY Halloween
Halloween is right around the corner, and out of all the holidays, it's probably the most exciting for Makers, artists, and DIY tinkerers. Whether you plan to make a small porch pouncer to scare off trick-or-treaters or a full-scale haunted house, DIY Maker tech will make it smarter and simpler to set up.
Here are some products, ideas, and everything in between to bring the spooky skeleton vibes home this Halloween!
1. Adafruit Hallowing M4 Express
This Hallowing board does most of the work for you - it's skull-shaped and comes with a spooky eye demo pre-flashed, but you can easily replace what shows up on the 240 x 240 IPS TFT screen using CircuitPython or the Arduino IDE.
Under the hood, it's very similar to the Feather M4 Express, so it's perfect for use with a variety of add ons, sensors, and of course, Neopixels and DotStar LEDs!
2. DIY Spider Robot Kit
This DIY Spider Robot Kit lets you build your own eight-legged companion to scare trick-or-treaters off your porch. The base version of the kit is a standalone six-legged robot, but by adding a few extra parts, you can turn it into a distance measuring, object avoiding, little terror-bot!
3. Day of the Geek Soldering Badge
Soldering practice kits are great ways to up your skills and a fun thing to do in their own right. So why not make your learning a seasonally appropriate event with this Day of the Dead-themed soldering practice badge!
Sure, Cinco de Mayo isn't exactly Halloween, but an LED flashing skull mask? That's something hard to resist!
4. Music Reactive Pi Pico 3D Printed Ghost
This smol spooker is the creation of Redditor dr2mod, who rigged up a Raspberry Pi Pico to control an LED inside a 3d printed ghost. We find this especially cool, as the ghost will pulsate whenever powered, but you can also attach it to a computer via USB and have the LED react to the ambient sound in the room!
You can find all the code for this project on dr2mod's GitHub page, and everything you need to build it (including the white filament) is available in the Electromaker Store!
5. Animatronic Eye Twitching 3d Printed Skull
This 3d printed chattering skull will chill unsuspecting visitors to the bone - or maybe make their jaws ache from laughing. It uses a Raspberry Pi as the brain and a PIR sensor for detecting approaching humans and allows for an optional speaker for spooky sounds!
The real stars of the show here are the micro servos controlling the movement. They are cheap, easy to use, and perfect for all forms of spooks and scares!
6. Home Automation - Spooky Style
If you really want to go all out, you could set up a mini home automation system just for Halloween. Rob Reynolds shows how you can use Sparkfun's Qwiic connection system to create an entire spooky scene!
The build uses multiple Qwiic boards including an MP3 playing breakout, but we think the most useful Sparkfun Qwiic connector for the whole year round is the Relay add-on!
7. Disco Helmet Costume
Are you looking for the perfect trick or treating costume? This Daft-Punk-inspired Disco Helmet is completely 3d printed and uses NeoPixels to create a light show across the eyes and ears!
It's available as part of an all-in-one kit that comes with everything you need to create and program your own futuristic costume!
Tis the Spooky Season!
What are your Halloween plans? Are you a stay-at-home horrifier or a trick-or-treat terror? There's always something fun to do as a maker at this time of year, and there are plenty of great ideas to choose from for your project!
Have fun, and remember, save some candy for the day after!
Ian Buckley is a writer, musician, and perpetual tinkerer. Commonly found surrounded by hobby electrical components, he's also a keen programmer and likes to build crazy-sounding instruments with microcontrollers. In addition to Electromaker, Ian writes over at MakeUseOf and has bylines at the likes of Online Tech Tips as well as Help Desk Geek.
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