Category Archives: Holiday Hacks

3D Printing, Halloween Style

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The wonders of 3D printing don’t stop coming. Whether it’s printing tools on the International Space Station, printing houses out of concrete, or just making spare parts for a child’s toy, there’s virtually nothing you can’t get done with the right 3D printer, including spicing up your Halloween decorations.

Not only is this pumpkin a great-looking decoration for the season on its own, but it can also transform into a rather unsettling spider as well for a little bit of traditional Halloween surprise. The print is seven parts, which all snap into place and fold together with a set of …read more

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Flying Human Head Lands Just in Time for Halloween

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We love the fall here at Hackaday. The nights are cooler, the leaves are changing, and our tip line starts lighting up with some of the craziest things we’ve ever seen. Something about terrifying children of all ages just really speaks to the hacker mindset. That sounds bad, but we’re sure there’s a positive message in there someplace if you care to look hard enough.

Today’s abomination is a truly horrifying human head quadcopter, which exists for literally no other reason than to freak people out. We love it. Created by [Josh] and a few friends, the “HeadOCopter” is built …read more

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Arcade Inspired Halloween Candy Dispenser

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The days are getting shorter and the nights are a little cooler, which can only mean one thing: it’s officially time to start devising the trials you’ll put the neighborhood children through this Halloween. For [Randall Hendricks], that means building a new candy dispensing machine to make sure the kids have to work for their sugary reward. After all, where’s the challenge in just walking up and taking some candy from a bowl? These kids need to build character.

[Randall] writes in to share his early work on this year’s candy contraption which he’s based on a popular arcade game …read more

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Mario Candy Machine Gamifies Halloween

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Picture it: Halloween, 2018. You want to go to a party or take the kids out trick-or-treating, but remember what happened last year when you weren’t there to answer the door? A pack of wild children blew their allowances on 48 rolls of the cheapest toilet paper ever printed, and it took you four full hours to get all the sodden, dew-laden wads out of your rose bushes.

Halloween is a time to fear things like hobgoblins and the possibility of The Purge becoming a thing, not sugar-fueled children who are upset that you left out a bowl of Sixlets, …read more

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Launching Fireworks with Raspberry Pi this Fourth of July

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It’s that time of year again in the United States, and the skies will soon be alight with pyrotechnic displays, both professional and amateur. Amazing fireworks are freely available, sometimes legally, sometimes not. For the enthusiasts that put on homebrew displays, though, the choice between watching your handiwork or paying attention to what you’re doing while running the show is a tough one. This Raspberry Pi fireworks show controller aims to fix that problem.

[netmagi] claims his yearly display is a modest affair, but this controller can address 24 channels, which would be a pretty big show in any neighborhood. …read more

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Parts Bin Spooky Eye Build

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Halloween is a great holiday for hacks, bringing out the creativity in even the most curmudgeonly wielder of a soldering iron. [tdragger] was looking to have some good old fashioned Halloween fun, and got to thinking – putting together this great Spooky Eyes build in their attic window.

The effect itself is simple – just two glowing orange LEDs spaced the right distance apart, placed in the highest window in the house. As every young child knows, the attic is almost the spookiest room in the house, second only to the basement.

Various effects were programmed in to the Arduino …read more

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Taking Halloween to the Next Level with JARVIS

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As an avid “Haunt Hacker”, [Steve Koci] knows a thing or two about bringing high-tech to Halloween. Wanting to build a mobile robot that could accompany him to conventions as a demonstration of the sort of animatronic mechanisms and controls he uses, he came up with the idea of JARVIS. The original plan was to make a more traditional robot, but with the addition of an animated skull and some Steampunk-style embellishments, JARVIS is definitely the kind of thing you don’t want to run into on an October night.

Construction of JARVIS started in 2016, after [Steve] saw the Agent …read more

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A Perfect Rose, a Stepper, an X-Ray Machine, and Thee

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The Day of Compulsory Romance is once more upon us, and in recognition of that fact we submit for your approval an alternative look at one of the symbols of romantic love: an X-ray of a rose.

Normally, diagnostic X-rays are somewhat bland representations of differential densities of the tissues that compose various organs and organ systems, generally rendered in shades of gray. But [Linas K], a physicist with time to kill and access to some cool tools, captured the images in the video below not only in vivid color, but as a movie. The imaging side of the project …read more

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Teardown: What’s Inside a Christmas Laser Projector?

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In the world of big-box retail, December 26th is a very special day. The Christmas music playing on the overhead speakers switches back to the family friendly Top 40, the store’s decorations get tossed in the compactor, and everything that’s even remotely related to the holiday is put on steep clearance. No more money to be made on the most commercialized of all holidays, so back to business as usual.

It’s in this narrow corridor of time, between the Great Holiday Unloading and the new spring products coming in, that you can find some fantastic deals on Christmas decorations. Not …read more

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LED Tree Brings Gravity to Christmas

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Here’s a fun entry into our coin cell challenge. The power source is the actuating force in [Frank]’s blinky LED Christmas tree, which takes advantage of the physical structure of coin cells and our old pal gravity to roll out some holiday cheer. Talk about forward voltage!

We love the concept, and the circuit couldn’t be more simple. A coin cell is released at the top of the tree and rolls down a series of angled foam board railings covered with 1/4″ copper tape. As the coin cell travels, the negative terminal shimmies along the face of the tree, which …read more

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