Ever look at a pile of 10mm LEDs and think “mmm, they look just like gumdrops!” These LED gummy candies are so realistic they’ll have your friends fooled at first, then delighted that they are actually edible (and delicious). Head over to the LED Gummy Candy tutorial at the Adafruit Learning System, and watch the video on YouTube (please subscribe!) and Vimeo.

The legs are 3D printed in PLA (corn-based plastic) and they function like toothpicks, we inserted them while the gummies we cooling. It should be noted that gummies are a low-temperature candy, do not use 3D printed parts with any high-temp hard candies!

Here’s yet another really awesome Halloween project we are just discovering now! Really neat project that I’d really like to see in 3D-printed characters! Works lovely to control a bunch of servos with a Pi — check out our tutorial as well! From HariEdo:

I found some squeaky rubber rats at the local dollar store last year. Of course I had to buy ten of them, and then work on some sort of project later. Once I got my Raspberry Pi, I knew I had to combine these into a Hallowe’en decoration project.

Recipe:

• 2S hobby lipo (2S4P in this configuration) for 7.4V
• 2x Sparkfun 5V/3.3V breadboard power regulator, modified to remove PTC fuses
• Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 1
• Adafruit Pi Cobbler GPIO breakout
• Adafruit 16 Channel i2c PWM Servo Controller
• 10x Tower Pro SG92R micro servos (via Adafruit)
• 20x 5mm Red LEDs
• 10x 330 Ohm resistors
• 10x 1 meter Futaba-style servo extensions (via eBay)
• 10x 6 cm Futaba-style servo extensions (hand assembled)
• 10x dollar store rat toys
• 2x solderless breadboards and a few wires
• USB micro B plug (chopped a USB plug) to power Raspberry Pi
• Hot Glue to form insulators and standoffs

Check out our Adafruit 16 Channel Servo Driver with Raspberry Pi tutorial for our Servo Driver blow:

Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver – I2C interface – PCA9685

You want to make a cool robot, maybe a hexapod walker, or maybe just a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. Or maybe you want to drive a lot of LEDs with precise PWM output. Then you realize that your microcontroller has a limited number of PWM outputs! What now? You could give up OR you could just get this handy PWM and Servo driver breakout.

When we saw this chip, we quickly realized what an excellent add-on this would be. Using only two pins, control 16 free-running PWM outputs! You can even chain up 62 breakouts to control up to 992 PWM outputs (which we would really like to see since it would be glorious)

• It’s an i2c-controlled PWM driver with a built in clock. That means that, unlike the TLC5940 family, you do not need to continuously send it signal tying up your microcontroller, its completely free running!
• It is 5V compliant, which means you can control it from a 3.3V microcontroller and still safely drive up to 6V outputs (this is good for when you want to control white or blue LEDs with 3.4+ forward voltages)
• 6 address select pins so you can wire up to 62 of these on a single i2c bus, a total of 992 outputs – that’s a lot of servos or LEDs
• Adjustable frequency PWM up to about 1.6 KHz
• 12-bit resolution for each output – for servos, that means about 4us resolution at 60Hz update rate
• Configurable push-pull or open-drain output
• Output enable pin to quickly disable all the outputs

We wrapped up this lovely chip into a breakout board with a couple nice extras

• Terminal block for power input (or you can use the 0.1″ breakouts on the side)
• Reverse polarity protection on the terminal block input
• Green power-good LED
• 3 pin connectors in groups of 4 so you can plug in 16 servos at once (Servo plugs are slightly wider than 0.1″ so you can only stack 4 next to each other on 0.1″ header
• “Chain-able” design
• A spot to place a big capacitor on the V+ line (in case you need it)
• 220 ohm series resistors on all the output lines to protect them, and to make driving LEDs trivial
• Solder jumpers for the 6 address select pins

This product comes with a fully tested and assembled breakout as well as 4 pieces of 3×4 male straight header (for servo/LED plugs), a 2-pin terminal block (for power) and a piece of 6-pin 0.1″ header (to plug into a breadboard). A little light soldering will be required to assemble and customize the board by attaching the desired headers but it is a 15 minute task that even a beginner can do. If you want to use right-angle 3×4 headers, we also carry a 4 pack in the shop.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

Want a FREE RASPBERRY PI? All orders over $350 get a FREE Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM!

Spinning Tornado Costume.

The tornado costume was a success!

The mechanism was not as dependable as I would have preferred. The socket-set connections were good, but I should have welded the final upright link to the metal bolt inside the “propeller” crossbar at the top.

I shouldn’t have used fiberglas insulation. Spray paint helped keep it subdued, but the fibers still caught the air and broke free, flying around inside and outside of the costume. The fiberglas was irritating.

I’m happy to have created a new style of harness for a costume. I hope it inspires other rotating costumes in the future… and I hope I don’t have to compete against them.

Adafruit community member Will Moindrot combined Mitch Altman’s Adafruit Brain Machine kit with a hairdresser dummy to create an eerie Halloween spectacle … one that flickers at a pattern that just might induce trip cycles. (The lights are really bright, though, so unless you are watching this on video, don’t stare into the lights!)

This is a video of something I made for Halloween. It’s based off the circuit used by Ada Fruit’s Brain Machine kit. Got the electronics from RS Farnel, soldered onto Strip board, I have embedded it into a Hairdressers head. Lots of fun but I am interested in seeing how to manipulate the trip cycle, connect it to Arduino or Raspberry Pi?

Brain Machine Kit v1

Relax and rejuvenate as your brain synchronizes to a wonderful meditative state, and enjoy as you hallucinate beautiful colors and patterns from your subconscious mind!

The Brain Machine provides you with a fun, easy way to meditate, all the while being very photogenic! They work with lights and sounds that pulse at a 14-minute-long meditation sequence of brainwave frequencies. Your brain synchronizes to this meditation sequence, and you meditate. It’s that easy! And the beautiful colors and patterns you vividly imagine along the way make it fun and enjoyable. The Brain Machine works with blinking lights. Be aware that blinking lights are not good for some people, especially those prone to seizures!

Build your own Brain Machine to expand your brain’s technical skills, then lean back and enjoy the light show. They are a blast at parties, a fun way to practice meditation and trip out.L

The Brain Machine Kit is an unassembled DIY kit – all the parts needed to make it are included:

• High quality Printed Circuit Board
• All electrical components, including pre-programmed microcontroller, wires, LEDs
• Over-ear headphones
• Dark-tinted safety glasses (fits children and adults)
• Color printed overlay for fashionability
• 2 x AAA batteries included – will last for hundreds of ‘trips’

The Kit does not include basic tools! You will need to provide the tools necessary for construction including a soldering iron, diagonal cutters, drill, hot glue (or other adhesive), scissors, etc. For the list of tools you’ll need, please check the project prep page The project is not very difficult and can be constructed in 2-3 hours at a leisurely pace by someone with no soldering experience. We have plenty of testing spots to help you along.

For more information including the detailed kit instructions please visit the project page!

Adafruit community member Scott Bennett was inspired by Phil Burgess’s E-Demon Costume to make his own version for Halloween. The results are impressive — take a look at the documentation of his build! (Above are some real-world reactions to his costume, below is a video of the stripped down version running.)

Also, here are Phil’s Multiple LED Backpacks and Wave Shield Voice Changer Adafruit Learning System instructions!

I started with a Male Blank No Face Mask that I bought on Amazon. I used two of Adafruit’s 1.2″ blue 8×8 LED Matrices for the eyes and a set of three 1.2″ red 8×8 LED Matrices for the mouth. As in the tutorial, I hot glued the 3 mouth matrices together in a strip. The pressure of the outer mask tended to break the bonds and I ended up re-gluing one of the mouth matrices a couple of times. At first I hotglued the matrices to the mask but I found that wire worked much better….

Read more.

And here’s Phil’s E-Demon!

Greg posted up this fabulous costume for his turtle, Frankie.

Want to be featured on Flickr pool Friday? Add your Adafruits to the Adafruit Flickr pool.

Mike writes in:

I was hoping to show this off on Show & Tell but it did not come to pass. As you had asked about projects using Adafruit products, I had built a Cylon Pumpkin with a twist – using a Wave Shield and infrared remote to trigger sounds and turn on or mute the eye sound.

I had originally had a problem with the Wave Shield not working but your eagle-eye support forum moderator spotted a potential cold joint (even where I thought I’d touched them up). My thanks to the support. I decided after the build that I needed a better soldering iron so I ordered a Hakko from you and will put it to good use.

Thanks for the great customer support, creativity in what you stock, and the Adafruit Learning Center helping to show the potential of your products.

Now to build a voice changer with the pumpkin’s Arduino/Wave Shield and one of your electret amplifier boards

Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit – v1.1 – Adding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult. Here is a shield for Arduinos that solves this problem. It can play up to 22KHz, 12bit uncompressed audio files of any length. It’s low cost, available as an easy-to-make kit. It has an onboard DAC, filter and op-amp for high quality output. Audio files are read off of an SD/MMC card, which are available at nearly any store. Volume can be controlled with the onboard thumbwheel potentiometer.

JennaMarbles posted this awesome video about her Blades of Glory costumes including hand-drawn illustrations by her boyfriend, Max, and LED wire lights harvested from children’s’ tutus. Oh, and cell phone belt buckles!

Cool 3D Light Goggles powered by a MintyBoost!

October is one of my favorite months and it has been quite a memorable one so far. I have taken a brief breather from developing my delta army and engaged in a playful dialogue with a fellow techie at our local Hacker space here in town. He has an impressive collection of self-made steam punk inspired goggles, of which he is currently underway with his fourth pair. In response to this stellar practice, I have created my own version… a retro leather-trimmed set that has some nifty chain-switch activated light pipe around the lenses to give the illusion of neon.

MintyBoost Kit – v3.0 – The world’s first and only open-source hardware charger: The MintyBoost! Make your own iPod/iPhone/GPS/etc… battery-pack and recharger! This project includes all the electronic parts necessary to build your own MintyBoost: a small & simple (but very powerful) USB charger for your iPod (or other mp3 player), camera, cell phone, and any other gadget you can plug into a USB port to charge. If you have a Nintendo DS/GBA or a PSP you can buy charger cables from us, too.

The charger circuitry and 2 AA batteries fit into an small space such as an Altoids gum or mint tin, and will run your iPod for hours, 2.5x more than you’d get from a 9V USB charger! You can use rechargeable batteries too.

Over in the Adafruit forums, Tim shared with us his huge 8ft tall Minecraft Creeper project that him and some friends built.  It is controlled by an Arduino, and the sound effects come from an Adafruit Wave Shield.

In Minecraft there are a variety of monsters, the most troublesome of these is the “Creeper.” Creepers are plant monsters who explodes when they get next to you usually leaving a crater in the aftermath. Woe to the player who is surprised by their distinctive SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSBOOOM!

In respect to Minecraft’s king of monsters I and some of my cohorts thought it would be entertaining to undertake a project to build a creeper prop with some animated features for Holloween this year. Our hope is to give an authentic creeper experience to some trick-or-treaters! Naturally, making robocreeper actually explode is not something we can really do in our urban environment, but we can load the thing with RGB LEDs, motors, motion sensors, and a loud speaker that will let you know when you have entered the blast zone!

Be sure to check out the build log gallery on Google+. Nice work Tim!

Pumpktris via Colossal, powered by Adafruit gear!

Nathan writes:

The Adafruit LED Matrix Backpack is meant to have its LED matrix soldered right to the board, but instead I soldered on female headers that would permit me to plug in either the mini LED matrix for code testing or the large matrix for deployment. Someone will probably be along to tell me I need a resistor here or there or I’m going to blow some chip up—and they’re likely right—but it seems to have worked so far as-is.

To connect my own matrix to the I2C Backpack, I cut down a piece of prototyping board and soldered in the male headers, then connected the 8″ wires from the last row and last column of the matrix to the board.

Adafruit LED Matrix Backpacks -What’s better than a single LED? Lots of LEDs! A fun way to make a small display is to use an 8×8 matrix or a 4-digit 7-segment display. Matrices like these are ‘multiplexed’ – so to control 64 LEDs you need 16 pins. That’s a lot of pins, and there are driver chips like the MAX7219 that can control a matrix for you but there’s a lot of wiring to set up and they take up a ton of space. Here at Adafruit we feel your pain! After all, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could control a matrix without tons of wiring? That’s where these adorable LED matrix backpacks come in.

Thanks to Brian Howland for this great video of his PumpkinHead Animatronic project that he had hoped to share during the Halloween Show & Tell!

It uses: Boarduino, Audio Shield, 16 ch servo board, RGB LED Strip and some preliminary software based on your examples.

Show & Tell is great stuff! Great to see so many folks building stuff. I am mostly by myself here in Iowa as a Maker. I will try to get on the show another time.

We look forward to having you on next time!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

This is a great story, and one that makes you appreciate the internet a bit more.  Patton Oswalt’s daughter really wanted her dad to be Doc Ock (Doctor Octopus) to go with her own Spider Man costume this year for Halloween.  Patton did some digging and couldn’t find a good costume on the internet, so he posted a tweet asking for help.

Adam Savage from Mythbusters happened to read the tweet, and decided to help out.

Using some inexpensive components, and only 4 hours of his time, he created the Doc Ock costume for Patton.  Here is a video of Adam explaining how he made it:

Halloween has been postponed in NYC but probably not for most of you reading this! Here are some highlights from our #electronichalloween series this month. Have a safe and fun night and please send us pictures of your amazing costumes and decor! Add them to the Adafruit Flickr pool, post them up on our Facebook page, or drop us a line on Twitter. And remember, through the end of the day today 10/31, get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category with code HALLOWEEN2012. Above is Phil Burgess aka Paint Your Dragon’s Electronic Demon costume using Adafruit gear, all finished (looking’ great!).

Wave Shield projects 

Trick or Treat

Segment display projects

EL wire projects

Pumpkins

Mechanical hands

Candy hacks

Top 10 robot costumes

Haunted houses

Electronic Halloween props

Bike & skateboard Halloween projects

LEDs

A fried IC became the inspiration for a series of really cute Op-Amp spiders over at x-laser.com! THanks for sending these to us!

The X-Laser spider inspecting circuit boards.

The X-Laser spider examines one of the soldering irons.

The X-Laser Spider spins a solder web off a ladder.

Read more!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

From the Adafruit forums

Hi – my daughter made her robot halloween costume using many Adafruit parts. She did all the electronics work herself. She cut apart one of the RGB LED strips into three pieces, soldered on connecting jumper wires, soldered in an on/off switch, soldered everything to an Adafruit protoshield kit, plunked it onto one of your Arduino’s and figured out the sketch. She learned how to do most of this from your website. She is ten years old. Thank you for all of the fantastic tutorials.

These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you.

In Stock and Shipping Now

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

This one isn’t exactly an easy last minute costume, but it is hands-down one of my favorite DIY costumes this year.  Check out this video on how the costume was made, and that creepy eyeball works.

Full-Size Doc Ock Costume

Scary Scarecrow Mask (With Moveable Jaw)

How to make an Iron Man Mask

Blinking Halloween Spider Eyes Hats using PICAXE 08m chips

These are shoes attached to LED floor tiles, equipped with a pressure switch so that they light up when you step, just like the Michael Jackson Billie Jean video.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

As we curve around the track with the Halloween finish line in sight, we wanted to share our weekly Adafruit Show and Tell, dedicated (in part) to the sharing of Halloween costume projects!

Phil and Limor showed up in a “People-about-to-be-flooded” costume — very hurricane appropriate. Not much by way of electronics, but a high concentration of electrical engineer.

For those who have been following Phil Burgess’s “Electronic Demon Project” costume, here is a pretty final version — now with EL-wire traced wings!

Jerry Isdale from MauiMakers in Hawaii shared his costume — combination spaceman costume with TLC LEDs draped from it and a shirt made of Adafruit LED strips (10 strips at 10 LEDs each) run on a Teensy ATmega32u4 with a MaKey-MaKey running for interactive changes. He has been playing around with a bunch of code to handle the triggering he’d like (though stay tuned to see what ends up working). He also shared about his newly funded SpaceGambit project.

And while we didn’t make it to the Show and Tell, Hil and I wanted to share here the super quick EL wire project that the two of us created in Brooklyn only moments before the Adafruit Show and Tell performance. One of the difficult elements when adding LEDs, lights and electrical bits to a costume is how to protect the wiring, battery pack, etc from moisture, sweat, friction, rain, twisting, etc.

One super quick way to create a blinky-focused design safely is to grab a clean plastic take-out food container from a dollar store, mark out your design in sharpie on the inside of the enclosure, and then drill out mounting points on the bottom of the dish. Once your LEDs, EL wire, LCDs, etc, are firmly in position, throw your inverters and battery packs into the clamshell of the food container and have a nicely sealed up project, ready for a rambunctious (and, ahem, rather rainy) Halloween night-on-the-town.

Hilary drew the moon she wanted and I drilled a series of tiny pairs of holes along the path. Small pieces of wire were used to hold the EL wire in place, twisted tight on the other side of the dish. In the case of this moon, we didn’t even trim our EL-wire — we wanted the entire length for an upcoming a jack-o-lantern project. So we routed it around a couple of times and tucked the additional length inside the food container.

This solution works great for LEDs and other elements as well, those delicate solder points held safely away from the the body (for protection of both joins and skin!) — you can even fracture the plate once everything is set in place to tape it up in electrical tape as a “dead bug” to remount elsewhere!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Last night I took the as-yet-unnamed electronic demon out for a test run at the local pumpkin patch…an opportunity to try out the battery packs and work out any last gremlins. The kids were absolutely fascinated, and more than a few future engineers were hatched!

He’ll be dropping in at the Make: Halloween party on Google+ this afternoon, then might be spotted around Russell Street in Berkeley CA on Halloween night. Rawrrr!

A few additional photos on Flickr, and we previously posted a how-to video and tutorials. Start planning for next Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Best costume ever – Alien’s “loader” baby via Chr1sa.

Scott’s ATST Walker Costume @ Incredible Stuff on Cockeyed.com.

Scott Holden’s Halloween Costume for 2012. A 14′ ATST combat walker from Return of the Jedi.

The weekly – SHOW AND TELL is now on the Adafruit Industries Google+ page! We will be asking all the folks in the +Limor Fried (ladyada) show-and-tell circle to re-add themselves to the +Adafruit show-and-tell circle shortly. We’re moving the show-and-tell to the +Adafruit page so more of our staff can run the show-and-tells. For example, we’ll have a wearable electronics / FLORA themed one with Becky and a 3D printing themed one with Matt.

Please post a comment on the Adafruit page to be added! Make sure you add Adafruit to your circles first!

Tonight, show up in COSTUME (or share a Halloween project) and win prizes!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month we’ve been bringing you special “Electronic Halloween” posts here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th at 9:30pm ET! Show up in costume or with a fun Halloween project to show. Please post a comment on the Adafruit page to be added to the show and tell circle! Make sure you add Adafruit to your circles first!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Phil Burgess’ Electronic Demon Costume will probably be in attendance!

The Pumpkin Maestros.

The year is 1992, and Marc Evan and Chris Soria are sitting next to each other in sixth-grade Spanish class. They don’t know it yet, but these two twelve year olds are going to become best friends. They’re going to construct epic haunted houses each year, petrifying parents more than peers. They’re going to attend an artsy high school, study illustration at Parsons, grow up, and move to Brooklyn. They’re going to freelance and bartend and, per their favorite holiday, casually carve some pumpkins for bosses and friends. And then the Yankees are going to put in a double-digit order, and Maniac Pumpkin Carvers will be born.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Have you ever done something silly on a lark and then found it was a big hit? So it went with a “beta test” Halloween idea on the Adafruit Show & Tell last week of my electronic demon costume. This video is a summary of what was done there… and what I’m now scrambling to finish properly before the big day! Video on YouTube (please subscribe!) and Vimeo.

The code for the LED mask with voice is in the adavoice repository on Github. This references the Wave Shield Voice Changer and Multiple LED Backpack tutorials.

Some updates since this was shot: a Ustream chat participant during Show & Tell suggested using a paintball mask as a base. I’m currently working on the faux ribcage idea… there may be enough space to move most of the electronics there and have just batteries in the pack. We shall see!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Great new kit from Eric at Low Voltage Labs via Evil Mad Science.

Eric over at Low Voltage Labs has posted up his design for a simple PCB ideal for putting an LED into a pumpkin. This is very much like our simple LED pumpkin project but in a neat, reusable format. And it makes a mighty cute little jack-o-lantern all on its own.

He has made it available as a kit with PCB, switch, resistor, battery holder and the same candle flicker LEDs which we love so much. Unfortunately, the kit is currently sold out. Hopefully he’ll make more, if not in time for this Halloween, then at least for next year.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

(Light)paint me a heretic, but you don’t necessarily need to use EL wire to create the Tron costume of your dreams. Check out this project by Sheet Metal Alchemy for Tronning-in-LED:

My goals in making this costume were to make a robust, easily washable, waterproof, Tron-style suit which was energy efficient to minimize battery weight and hardware bulk. To do that, I had to dodge the commonly used EL wire implementations and switch to LEDs.

Even if you aren’t interested in making a Tron suit, I would highly recommend reading the section on lighting implementation – I did not individually stitch each LED with conductive thread…instead I used a combination of silicone coated LED strips and faux leather to produce a beautiful, diffuse light without seeing those pesky LED points.

The Internets are full of great Iron Man costume (XRobots!) and Arc Reactor LED projects (Skimbal!), but I really liked this chest strap from ChaozLabs for the great glow-behavior and 3D printed enclosure! Wear it under a t-shirt for a nicely understated Tony Stark-as-civilian look.

Speaking of understated and awesome, I love the Kraftwerk-inspired LED tie from Evil Mad Science!

Check out this great Arduino controlled Slot Machine costume with addressable LEDs from wirenut1980, who created a great Singing Pumpkins project last year.

The above video was created by a crew of folks who followed this project tutorial from deadinsect:

This is a visually stunning fancy dress costume using LED rope lights and a plastic washing basin to create a deep sea bioluminescent jellyfish thing. Perfect for Halloween, or any party where it’s going to be dark. People will stop in their tracks to start dancing round you, or simply have a spasm. You will feel like a total attention whore, but you will love it too.

Why stop at a few LEDs? Check out this LED-encrusted nightmare, a costume-within-a-costume, here:

I’ve been wanting to make an inflatable creature that would give birth to me for a while now (lots of my friend’s are having babies, so I guess my subconscious is trying to digest this). In this project, the giant evil mama bear gives birth to a slutty baby bear with LEDs, who then performs a LED hula-hoop number. After the main show I used the “power glove” to control the led lights while dancing and socializing.

Um…that’s a lot of LEDs you’ve got there, buddy.

Why stop at too many LEDs when you can go further and make an RGB LED television Video Coat!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Check out this great write up from ch00ftech industries showing a take-two on creating light-up Kanye West glasses with EL Wire, improving the overall brightness and creating a sequencer:

The main difference with my new design is how the EL wire is controlled.  Before, I had the entire box controlled with an analog circuit.  I like to make things analog whenever possible, and given how simple a graphic equalizer is, it wasn’t much of a challenge.  This presented a problem this time around though.

The new glasses will be set up on a display for a silent auction, and keeping in line with the “silent” aspect, there won’t be any loud music to show them off.  This makes them a lot less desirable as a simple description card really can’t convey how cool they are.

This meant that I had to incorporate some kind of “demo” mode which eventually turned into making a full-on digital sequencer that can either react to music or play back pre-recorded patterns.

Read more.

Dave B writes in:

Here is my version of this project, using the 0.8″ LED matrix/backpacks. I really enjoyed putting it together – thanks for the idea and tutorials (oh – and the source code!). The skull is a temporarily re-purposed candle holder.  An Ardweeny powers the sketch (my Adafruit ARDX would not fit into the Brainial Cavity).

HOW-TO: Animating Multiple LED Backpacks @ The Adafruit Learning System

Cool project by John Abella– used our tutorial for animating multiple LED backpacks on the Adafruit Learning System!

Super Spooky Evil Eyes of Doom Using atTiny85 and Arduino IDE.

Arduino EMF Detector Ghost Detector

Ghost in a Box Project

Ghost Busters Proton Pack built with an Arduino and an Adafruit Wave Shield

Ghosts of Arduino Decoration

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

So … you think it isn’t enough just for you to participate in Halloween this year — you’d like to get your furry, scaly, slimy, or fishy friends into the mix? It turns out that while this can be very difficult to do, a lot of brainpower out there in the world has been devoted to precisely this challenge. (And not always that successfully.)

The good news is that the mothership is coming to pick you up. The bad news is that it is slowwww, and steaaaadddy. But uses some great Adafruit gear!

Check out this video from The Mean Kitty: a series of velcro costumes that your cat might not love to wear, but the construction has been thought through such that you have a sporting chance to affix these to your cat. But maybe it is more fun to bring Halloween to you cat than wrap your cat in Halloween?

Great how-to for the Up! dog collar — and I can’t wait to see Phil Burgess’ voice mod used make the broken collar:

Have you ever watched Pixar’s Up and thought, I wish my dog had a collar that would let him talk to me? Well I did, so I set out to make him one.

Because we just have this snapshot and nothing from 30 seconds later, we can’t be sure if this is the coolest, or the cruelest, headless-horseman-riding-dog costumer. For more costumes-riding-dogs, check out this post from Laughing Squid.

Speaking of discomfort, I’m noticing that many Etsy pet costume crafters don’t mind how happy their models look in their outfits. And why should they? This sad cat sells the heck out of this hat. Though in another store, a happier subject loves its adorable hand crochet bear beanie.

Awesome iPhone dog costume created by Swell for the 2007 Tompkins Square Halloween Parade. (Photo by Gregory Hull.)

Great tutorial for this adorable costume made for Martha Stewart’s dog, Sharkey, for her Petacular Halloween Show by designer SwitchGirl:

It can be made easily with a low cost recycled fiber optic toy, felt, and some cute little pom poms!

A sweet moment between a man and his Cerberus, stumbled upon in Flickr.

While this doesn’t technically demonstrate a costume as much as an unusual cat that loves swimming enough to be willing to be strapped into an underwater rig, I figured sorting out how to get your cat rigged up for scuba diving has to be nearly as difficult as any other Halloween pet costume challenge.

Apparently this publicity stunt from the Zoo Neunkirchen has become so popular that there are commercial crocodile-eating-your-pet costumes that you can grab. I’d love to see some Muppets-eating-your-pets costumes, btw….

When going for pet costume gold, hold nothing back. Check out this great how-to for creating your own pirate dog costume from Craft!

And we mean hold nothing back.

But please do take care to think of your pet’s comfort, health, and safety first and foremost. Halloween is a very intense, alarming, noisy affair: you will want to take extra preparations and precautions for your charge if you are going to deck up your pet for trick-or-treating, parading, or clubbing!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Just in time to counter my sadness at how few custom electronics projects I saw at New York Comic Con, here are Cassy Michel’s instructions for a great LED Headdress project. She encourages it for alertness — but taking a look at her friend modeling it in the photo above, I see it as the perfect way to light up your Halloween-ed self in a dark room. Either way, more LED blinkies = everyone wins.

And bonus points — this is a project from one of Becky’s students at SVA’s Products of Design program!

One of the assignments in my class was to redesign a piece of trash. I decided a to redesign an iced coffee cup. After designing many edible cups I became really interested in energy and how individuals maintain energy. One of my ideas was to create a device that would encourage power naps over drinking caffeine. In doing research about sleep I discovered that the best way to wake up from sleep is through light.

This LED headdress is a prototype of what essentially is an alarm clock. The two lights would fade on when the user was ready to wake up. This is why the lights are so close to the eyes. In the end, I believe the object works better as a piece of jewelry. I would like to re-design this with one light in the center of the ring.

Read more.

Automatic Halloween Candy Dispenser

When trick-or-treaters show up at my house they can text, call, or tweet a code displayed on an LCD screen to get their Halloween candy. They can also push the Big Red button.

Once the candy request is made a few “special” effects are triggered by X10 modules. A low laying fog machine is activated and lights turn on while the candy shoots down from my front deck on the second floor.

Rain candy on your trick-or-treaters with this candy canon.

Make your own candy launching pumpkin.

Make an Aperture Science Automated Pumpkin Turret

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

I spent some time at New York Comic Con, hunting around for examples of blinkies and motors etc and stumbled upon the following:

Jesse and Mary Kate build this light cube, grabbing a few off-the-shelf lights and parts — and they recommend grabbing baseball display boxes and frosting the inside of them as diffusion to create the glowing cube effect.

There was a huge crowd gathered around the sound-activated EL panel shirts vendor. This vendor brought shirts built around quite a few up-to-the-moment memes and images, ranging from weak to truly awesome. For the individual, creating one-off multicolor EL panel artwork ain’t going to be cheap or easy, but by being strategic with your graphic design you can trim and coat single-color panels to create fun designs such as the charging battery and brony light panel animations by grabbing one of our sound-activated pocket inverters.

I have written about DIY Mindwave Cat Earsprojects before, but I will say it was nice seeing lots of individuals with no exposure to these technologies before trying out these EEG-activated ears — a great place to get folks started thinking about adding tentacles, tails, barnacles and other secondary elements back into the experience of the person wearing the costume.

Given all of the great Doctor Who-themed costumes, it was great fun seeing someone took the time to get an actual light into the lantern at the top of a TARDIS costume. Lauren (I believe) went with the simple hack to get a tea-light into the top of her hat, as the other solutions wouldn’t get her all the way through the day on battery power.

For the most part, the best costumes at New York Comic Con this year were decidedly non-electronic, sadly. Check out this great gallery from Flavorwire and WIRED to see some of the more technologically advanced examples — and imagine them next year with more active, embedded electronic elements.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Arduino Wireless Animatronic Hand

Arduino controlled robotic hand

How to Build a Robotic Hand with Haptic Feedback

Arduino Project with 5 servo and 5 flex sensor for hand robotic shadow

3D Printable Robotic Hand Components

Arduino-Controlled Robotic Arm Packs DIY Servo

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

HOW-TO: Animating Multiple LED Backpacks @ The Adafruit Learning System. Lights! Action! MORE LIGHTS! MORE ACTION!

Adafruit LED backpacks make it incredibly simple to add small bitmapped displays to a project. Each requires just four wires: power, ground and two communication lines to a microcontroller.

Two common questions we receive:

1. How can I use more than one 8×8 matrix backpack in an Arduino sketch?
2. Can I have two (or more) matrices always showing the same image?

This tutorial demonstrates both.

We’ve had spooky Halloween displays on the brain lately, but the concepts here are equally applicable to more benign concepts!

Learn more!

Jerome wrote in to share his amazing animatronic Stargate Horus helmet.

I’ve been working on several Halloween costumes that use Arduino powered animatronics. The video shows my Stargate helmet that uses an Arduino to control five servos that make the head move around, fans open and close and eyes that light up. There is a full build tutorial here.

I also recently have been working on a full animatronic Iron Man suit for a friend. It uses RFID tags as control inputs to open/close the helmet and activate repulsors, forearm missile, moving back flaps and opening shoulder rocket pods. The helmet is set up with a wireless link using XBee radios with Adafruit XBee adapters and the repulsor sounds are handled by a WaveShield. Arduinos are used to control the servos.

Working like mad to finish the suit by Halloween! There will be a full tutorial when it’s done.

Thanks for all of your wonderful products and tutorials. My eight year old son just soldered his very first circuit.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

 Sound reactive LED bike light

One wheeled balancing skateboard

EL panel bike turn signal armbands

Turn your bike or skateboard helmet into an R2-D2 helmet.

Self-balancing electric unicycle

Altoids bike headlight on the cheap

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Here are a bunch of places to check out to get you inspired for your #electronichalloween projects!

Welcome to the passionate and wildly competitive granddaddy of all places on the Internet obsessed with the activity of replicating (down to scratches and handling marks) props from movies, games, and other popular entertainment: the Replica Props Forum (or, “the RPF”). While some of the goals may seem a bit niche to those visiting for the first time, the level of craft and technical no-how here is darned impressive — some replicas actually beating out the original movie prop in a face-off. A visit to the forums is always a real eye-opener in terms of ranges of techniques and problem solving that goes into getting surface treatments, built-in electronics/LEDs, and other elements to look just right.

Here’s my favorite Arc Reactor from Thingiverse, rigged up by the talented Skimbal. If you spend a little bit of time on Thingiverse, among other places, you are going to see quite a few makers tackling the Tony Stark Arc Reactor. In fact, I’ve noticed that one in five male 3D printing enthusiasts will tend to declare: “I’m going to make a full suit.” (Only the brave few do.)

If you have been watching some of the great design work coming out of the “MakerBot” user on Thingiverse lately, you have probably been enjoying (among others) works of elite RPF participant and now MakerBot Maker, Todd Blatt. These two pieces are less demonstrative of his replica skills from his hackerspace days, but the MakerBelt and the Shofar (above) are both worth checking out.

Check out this great Fake Geiger Counter from one of our customers: a prop that really adds a level of drama and interactivity to a costume.

Hey, since you’re putting up Halloween electronics projects, maybe my Fake Geiger Counter would fit. It uses an Arduino to create a simulated geiger counter sound effect – perfect for a mad scientist lab!

Last year, Josh Di Mauro took the inexpensive off-the-shelf EEG “brain reader” called the Neurosky Mindwave and extended it into an open-source set of wearable cat-ears that respond, somewhat accurately, to the mood of the wearer. Fans of nekomimi take note. When last I chatted with him, he was planning to go after tentacles and other appendages next.

And remember… that if you create a prop that catches fire, you can drop it: much harder to do with a costume!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Arduino powered Haunted Mansion Singing Busts

Arduino controlled dropping spider

Halloween Zombie Trash Can

Fire House Halloween Display

Talking Arduino Halloween Skeleton

Those are just some of our favorites, post up yours in the comments!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Power loader (aliens).

Bender (2011) Dragoncon.

The DALEK.

Kid robot. Amazing robot costume with an Arduino, Game of life kit and Adafruit WaveShield!

Transformers Soundwave Costume.

Devin’s amazing Robo costume.

Kid robot – Helmet, chest plate, arm bracers, robot shins: Corrugated cardboard, Elmers glue, spray paint. Velcro straps from my hockey bag were used to keep some parts on.

CloroxBot Recycled Giant Robot Costume!

Wolfmech by Kevin Kelm.

Those are just some of our favorites, post up yours in the comments!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Here are a few points of inspiration for how you can combine the most important element from Halloween with your favorite DIY activity, i.e. candy+custom DIY electronics.

There have been a number of exciting dispenser projects shared over the years, but this one from Noel Portugal built around a Twilio triggering sequence has a nice demo video with what appears to be an actual child. And he used a few Adafruit items in his build. (See this link for his post for how he created this project.)

I just shared this one from the LVL1 hackerspace on Friday as a pumpkin project — but I suspect it is worth checking it out again today … in terms of the velocity of that flying candy. Dispensing candy? Or dispensing with visitors?

Or maybe you don’t want to dispense much candy, but want to learn about Capacitive Touch Sensors instead.

For this special Halloween project we built a spooky candy bowl that lights up when an unsuspecting trick-or-treater reaches in. While devices like these do exist, many of them use complicated proximity sensors to spring their trap…. Our proximity sensor is made using nothing but a NerdKit, two pieces of aluminum foil, and some paper clips!

Wait, that’s not candy, that brain’s made of fruit! I always fall for that. (Also, Halloween actual candy projects from Instructables.)

Say, how about instead of fiending over the candy of others, you just go ahead and make your own candy? Here is a recipe for an Almond Jay from CHOW, which rhymes very closely with my favorite Halloween treat.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns is perhaps the iconic activity of the Halloween. They are perfect blank canvases for makers to express electronic and interactive ideas. Here are a few pumpkin related halloween projects to give you that little bit of inspiration you need to get going.

First of all, it goes without saying that you can carve the darned things. But this is an important place to start. Some people get really into carving pumpkins and have lots to show you.

Or maybe you don’t need to carve it after all! Like this great Hack A Day LED pumpkin.

Well, you definitely need to add some candle flicker — time to incorporate the electronics! In this case using an ATTiny85 micro controller, programmed with the Arduino IDE.

Or maybe you want to go a bit brighter like this Laser Pumpkin from Novalasers. (And here’s the video of the death of this pumpkin.)

Or go a bit more modest like this classic Jack-o-lantern electronics project from Evil Mad Science with a Larson scanner rig.

This team goes full-on multimedia with their pumpkin!

This great Flamethrowing Jack-O’-Lantern tells visitors to back off.

While this one from the LVL1 hackerspace begs you to get a little closer. “Hello? There you are!” *pow*

The hackerspace NYC Resistor offers a yearly “Pumpkin Hacking Workshop” — check out these “hacked pumpkins” from Make: Live’s Halloween show last year, co-presented by Adafruit’s lovely Becky Stern.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

EL wire can bring a TRON costume to life, illuminate the edges of your fairy wings, or even jazz up your bicycle. Here are some of my favorite Halloween getups using EL wire. If you’re interested but don’t know where to start, try our EL tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System and even take a class with me on October 16th in NYC at The Madagascar Institute!

Michael Jackson EL Wire Jacket

TRON bag

EL wire shoes

Run your own EL workshop with our class guide!

No-sew luna fairy wings

EL wire shutter shades

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

Great Scott! DeLorean-Inspired Time Circuit Clock!

Make a clock with a seven segment display, RTC, and an Arduino.

Geobox: a reverse geocache box that opens when you arrive at a certain destination.

Make a clock with a seven segment display and a Raspberry Pi.

Check out all of Adafruit’s seven segment display options here (there are a lot of color options).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

We’re going to also figure out a date for the FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Event & costume contest! Stay tuned for that! For now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

“Star Mario” Halloween costume.

With a bit of hacking a $1 plastic pumpkin is upgraded: a sensor embedded in the nose detects when people get close and will play scarey sounds and animates LEDs on the face.

My absolute favorite costume.  The robot costume that responds when treats are added.

Another amazing Mario costume.

This is just a very very small list of ideas people have come up with for costume and decoration ideas that use the Adafruit Wave Shield.  Pick up your own Wave Shield in the Adafruit store and share your ideas with us!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

We’re going to also figure out a date for the FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Event & costume contest! Stay tuned for that! For now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.

We’re going to also figure out a date for the FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Event & costume contest! Stay tuned for that! For now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!