Halloween Fun
I hope you enjoy browsing the videos and details from our Halloween fun. Most of the code and designs are open source with some links below. Please reach out for details or code I haven't shared.
2020 - Candy Gatling Gun
The pandemic presented some limitations for this year and as expected, the volume of trick-o-treaters was low. We kept our social distance and delivered the candy by firing it over 100 feet in the air. The six barrels allowed me to deliver for most groups without pausing for a reload. I took very little video as well but went in full costume as the Joker. It was a bit dangerous as the Twix exit velocity was over 122mph.
2019 - Skeleton & Guillotine w/ Computer Vision
Halloween 2019 allowed us to play around with the OpenCV (Open source computer vision) library and create a creepy age guessing skeleton with motorized neck and jaw. He was somewhat generous with the guess. With the help of a sonic distance sensor, the skeleton was very quick to drop the guillotine when you reached for the candy.
2018 - Laser Protected 8ft Candy Slide
We got a bit of reuse of an 8 ft. matchbox car racing track I build years ago for Liam. A pair of servos on each lane released the fun size candy one at a time. The cheap but powerful laser swept back and forth with a synchronized PVC fog blowing pipe below to give the illusion slicing the surface.
2017 - Vampire in a Coffin
We built a coffin with a pop up vampire, which was essentially an automatically reloading catapult. Getting the springs and motors right was a challenge.
2016 - Pirate Ship
A smoke ring firing cannon from a skeleton ship.