It’s Halloween Time

Ghouls, ghosts, witches and other creatures of the dark will soon be knocking on your door screaming ‘trick or treat!’ Will you just give them candy and send them on their way, or will you be playing a few tricks before giving out those coveted sweet treats?

If you’re up to giving those little creatures a bit of a scare, here are some DIY tech tricks to automate your home’s spooky side.

3 ways to automate your haunted house

Pressure plate switch

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A pressure plate switch is a simple contraption that, when stepped on, triggers an action. Since it’s Halloween, the action could be a simple dimming of the porch light, scary sounds playing through speakers, dropping a mummy down from the ceiling.

Here’s how to make your own pressure plate switch:

MATERIALS

• 3 large rectangular cardboard pieces (size as needed)
• foil
• insulated wire
• tape
• wire strippers
• sharp knife or box cutter
• Depending on what you want to automate, you may need:
• an input pin
• 5V pin with a 1k resistor
• an Arduino
• some coding skills
• an auxiliary switch for DC electronics, or a relay with a 12 volt coil
• contacts rated high enough for your AC appliance
• insulated connectors
• insulated plastic housing
• extension cords
• 12 volt power supply or battery if you’ll be using DC appliances

DIRECTIONS

You need to wrap two of the cardboard pieces with foil (the foil must be wrapped just tight enough using the tape). Then attach a stripped portion of the insulated wire to the cardboard using the tape.

The third cardboard piece will be used as a spacer between the two cardboards with foil. To do this, cut the center of the third cardboard, just enough for it to act as a frame for the foiled cardboards.

Place one of the foiled cardboard pieces facing up, then place the spacer, and finally place the other foiled cardboard piece facing down. The two foiled cardboard pieces should not touch each other when the spacer is placed, and should only touch when pressure is applied. Secure the edges with tape. Now, you can connect the other end of the insulated wire to the device you want to trigger with the pressure plate switch.

Get the full instructions here.

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Sensors

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The best way to automate things is through the use of sensors. One of the simplest sensors to make is a proximity sensor which, when someone is close enough, triggers an action.

MATERIALS

• infrared (IR) LED
• infrared phototransistor
• 33 ohm resistor
• 10 kohm resistor
• black heat-shrink tubing the same diameter as the phototransistor
• perforated board
• a soldering iron
• an Arduino

DIRECTIONS

Connect the IR LED to the 5V supply using the 33 ohm resistor. To find the appropriate resistor value for the LED, use this formula: Resistor Value = (Supply Voltage – LED Voltage) / LED current.

Connect the emitter of the phototransistor to the ground.

Wire the collector to a 10 kohm resistor that is connected to 5V.

Connect an additional wire to the collector to act as an output pin for the sensor.

Solder the sensor components together to a small piece of perf board and use pins to connect the sensor to the signal processor.

Add a light barrier between the LED and phototransistor to ensure that reflected light is the only one detected by the phototransistor. The most effective light barrier is by placing a black heat shrink tubing around the phototransistor. This method also makes the sensor more directional.

Connect your sensor to a microcontroller, such as an Arduino, by connecting the ground terminal from the sensor to the GND pin on the microcontroller.

Connect the 5V wire from the sensor to with the 5V pin or a digital output pin set to HIGH then connect the signal wire from the sensor to an analog input pin on the Arduino.

You need some coding skills for your Halloween home automation to be completed. Here’s a simplified option and a simplified code option for you to try.

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TV, projector and DVD

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Admit it, not all of us are blessed with coding skills and not everyone has the patience to craft contraptions out of thin air. If you have an LED or LCD TV, a projector like the Epson Home Cinema 500 projector, a DVD player, and an AtmosFEARfx, gearing up for an automated Halloween experience could be quick and easy.

AtmosFEARfx features videos of various Halloween elements like dancing skeletons, creepy crawling spiders, singing pumpkins, scary portraits, and frightening ghosts. You can use a DVD player and place your TV in front of the window near the front door and choose the perfect clip to creep out the kiddies.

You can also use a projector to make pumpkins sing instead of spending hours carving them yourself, or make ghosts appear on the ceiling, door or wall to give trick-or-treaters a bit of a fright.

photo credit: jacilluch via photopin cc