Halloween 2013: Scary Pumpkin Bucket

My halloween project for this year: a treat bucket that makes scary noises when you reach in for a treat.

Materials:

• 1 standard plastic pumpkin treat bucket.
• 1 Android phone running Android 4.0 or later with the following software installed:
• Tasker
• Motion Detector
• A directory of short (3-7 second) sound files of halloween sound effects (screams, cackles, growls, etc)
• 1 3d-printed pumpkin bucket phone stand.
• Treats and/or toys (for bait).

To build your own scary pumpkin bucket:

1. Configure the software on the phone. 

You'll configure Motion Detector to send an Android intent when it detects motion, and you'll configure Tasker to play a random sound file from the effects directory when it receives the Motion Detector intent.

To configure Motion Detector:

1. Open Motion Detector and make sure the checkbox next to "Picture" is unchecked:
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen. Uncheck the box next to "Signal:  Enable beep when motion is detected" and check the box next to "General: When motion is detected, program will send Intent."
   

To configure Tasker:

1. Click "+" to add a profile.
2. When prompted for "First Context", choose "Event.
3. When prompted to "Select Even Category", choose "System".
4. When prompted to "Select System Event", choose "Intent Received".
5. On the "Event Edit" screen, under "Action" type "org.jastrzab.move.ACTION_GLOBAL_BROADCAST":
   
6. Click the gear in the upper left corner.
7. Click the "New task" popup.
8. Enter a name like "Play sound" and click the checkmark.
9. Click "+" to add an action to the "Play sound" task.
10. When prompted to "Select Action Category" click "Media".
11. When prompted to "Select Media Action" click "Music Play Dir".
12. In the "Action Edit" screen:
    1. Enter the name of your sound effects directory under "Dir". You can also click the magnifying glass to browse to the directory, and then long press the directory to select it.
    2. Check "Audio Only" and "Random".
    3. Set "Maximum Tracks" to 1.
    
    
13. Click the gear in the upper left to get back to the "Task Edit" screen, then press it again to get back to the "Profiles" screen.

2. Install the phone in the pumpkin.

1. Cut a small hole in the back of the pumpkin for the power cord (the motion detector uses a lot of juice, so the phone will need to stay plugged in.
   
   
2. Tape the phone stand to the bottom of the pumpkin so that the phone slot is up against the inside of the front of the pumpkin:
   

   
3. Open Motion Detector and turn on the Detector.
4. Thread the power cord through the hole in the back, plug it into the phone, and insert the phone into the phone slot so that the camera faces into the pumpkin. I recommend setting the phone to use the front-facing camera if it has one so that you can access the screen after the phone is inserted into the stand.
   
5. Cover the bottom of the pumpkin with candy and/or Halloween toys.
6. Lure victims.
   

Halloween Retrospective 2008: Whirligig Pumpkin

For Halloween 2008 I went low tech. I made a paper whirligig that spun around inside my jack o' lantern and made it look like the pumpkin was gnashing its teeth.

Apparently I've lost my pictures of this one so I'll have to just describe it. The whirligig consisted of a tube of tissue paper attached to a paper wheel to form a cylinder open at the bottom. The paper wheel balanced on a straightened paper clip attached to a frame that rested on the bottom of the pumpkin, so that the wheel could spin freely. Under the frame rested an LED light.

On the surface of the tissue paper tube I glued a black undulating pattern of teeth. I carved the pumpkin to allow enough breeze to blow into the interior to spin the whirligig if there was any wind at all. Spinning the whirligig created an impression of gnashing teeth as the undulating pattern rotated.

It was a  pretty cool effect at about 10 feet, but it was really too subtle to be seen from the street.

Halloween Retrospective 2007: Robot Pumpkin

In addition to being the month of liminal states, charlatanry, and thinning boundaries between worlds, October is also a month for making. I'll record here some of the things I've made for Halloween.

In October 2007, I made a robot jack-o-lantern with LED eyes.

Lego Mindstorms provided the robot smarts. Sound sensors drove a lazy susan bearing the jack-o-lantern. In effect, the random noises of traffic etc. caused the jack-o-lantern to turn back and forth. I put the robot pumpkin on the ledge of our 2nd floor terrace.

Not many people noticed from the street.

The Genre Year

To every season there is a genre.