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Geeky Gadgets for Halloween Parties?
Neurotoxic666 asks: "Like many others, my friends and I are going to hold a costumed party for Halloween, however we do not want it to be the typical haunt. We have some talent in computers and electronics, but we're short of ideas. Are there any good gadgets and props that the average geek can build to spice up the party? Of course, there will be the usual ambient sounds and decoration, but we're looking for more interactive, dynamic and techie stuff. One idea I've had is to use the living room computer on the TV and have white noise, ghosts and other creepy effects appear throughout the night. Does anyone have some suggestions, ideas we could build, effects that worked well in your parties? Anything from heart-beating books to special lightning to mad science devices is welcome!"
But you could setup a computer running Windows and hook it up to the Internet.
Just undress and let your own bodies do the trick? ;-)
A method free as in beer, showing what's full of beer. Yay!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Everything looks cooler when lit with EL Wire from Benny at Cool Neon! -Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
if you have a multichannel setup (4+ speakers) you can always try and produce some creepy 3D audio, making it seem like it's from a moving source.
Want your party to be a cut above your average geek party? Get some real live girls to come. Bonus if they're geeks!
Ooh, a third thought: How about a real geek - i.e. someone who bites the heads off live chickens???
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
I'm having a major fight with temptation about the Singing Buck, which K-mart has for $120 and is supposed to go on sale for $100 even. I had them get the Mr Microphone part out and held it up to my pda. It was nice getting to see the buck read Andromeda Strain to me in the middle of K-mart.
Thankfully, I was able to get 200 Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger" LiveCD+Installer CDs well before Halloween, so in addition to the delicious cheezy treats that I'll be handing out, I'll also be giving out the gift of open source. Is anyone else doing this?
-- @T4C
getting some girls there, but since you posted this on slashdot...
Needless to say, that effect has been disabled.
Gnash Gnash Gnash
Just google a bit to get plenty of other ideas. Liquid latex is also a very nice thing to make fake body parts, that you can stick between a door or something.
A lifesize Jack Thompson complete with fangs!
Head in a Jar anyone?
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
You're going to need a carved pumpkin with a lit candle in it, a hose of some sort, and some flour. Boar a hole in the back base of the pumpkin just big enough for your hose. Stick a small amount of flour in one end of the hose and insert the end into the hole of the pumpkin. Now stand back and blow into the other end of the hose and witness the fireball. Experiment with things to get maximum plumage. The hose can be pretty long, so you can really freak out kids while in the cover of stealth.
The modern stuff is not as easy to hack in this way because its hard to talk directly to the hardware -- too many drivers, libraries, and embedded smarts between the CPU and the printer's motors.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
But you could setup a computer running Windows and hook it up to the Internet.
Every Hallowe'en party needs a zombie.
you could dress as a RIAA lawyer.
Windows ME and AOL 9.0 Super-Dee-Duper Turbocharged Dialup-on-Steroids!!1!eleven
Guaranteed to scare the most seasoned geek:
You: "How are you, Grandmother?"
Your Grandma: "Why do all these nekked women keep popping up? Could I have a phish? 'Cause I read that Bill Gates tries to get everyone sick by adaware-ing that clickety-click-thing."
You: <begin shaking in terror>
Your Grandma: "Oh, and how come my computer doesn't fax? You said it could send faxes, so I jammed what I wanted to fax into the cup holder thingy. Then that little box - ya' know, the one on the ground, connected to the computer? - started making some funny sounds. So I just unplugged it from the wall. Then, the strangest thing happened. My computer went blank! So anyways, I want you to come over here tomorrow and fix that little box thing. Seems I need it for my computer to work."
You: <sobbing>
I bought a cheap smoke machine for $15. It comes with a switch on 6 Ft of cable. Press the button, you get smoke. So fine if your going to sit beside it all night but a not very useful otherwise. You can get a timer for $25, It will trun the smoke machine on and off for a set time ever so often.
But I came up with a much better idea. A montion sensor switch to trigger the smoke machine when someone approches.
I picked a "tomb stone" for $6 that has has a montion sensor. When the sensor is tripped it makes a sreaming noise and flashes some LED's. Open it up and disconnect the LED's, wire in a 5v reed relay, from Radio shack, in place of the LED's. Then wire the relay to the switch that came with the smoke machine (or use a separate cable).
Now when the sensor is activated the screams come on for 3 or 4 seconds and a the same time the smoke is on. Great to put just out side your door.
For the complete cheesey mad scientist effect build a Jacobs Ladder.
Cut your design in the pumpkin backwards, and set the pumpkin facing the wall. Insert a lit candle, and the silhouette is projected.
Kind of low tech, but cool nonetheless.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Get a strobe onto some dripping milk. When the strobe is flicking at the same frequency as the driping it looks like the drops are suspended in time. Adjust the strobe frequency and you can watch the splashes form back into droplets and move back up into the spout they came from. I built something like this at a party once, in a darkened room, it was a big hit. Called it a "time machine".
Simon.
There are all kinds of electric devices you can make that look like they are straight out of an old horror movie. Jacob's ladders are quite simple to build. You can find all the parts on ebay. If you are more ambitious, you might want to try a tesla coil.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Would you run anything from a CD you received on "trick-or-treat" night?
You don't need gadgets for this. Dress up as Steve Ballmer and do these things:
1. Monkey dance and sweat!
2. Say "Developers, developers, developers, etc.
3. Cuss and throw chairs.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I am thinking of dressing up as a chair, and having a cardboard cutout of Steve Ballmer drag behind me. I will lunge at people, and when the cord connecting the cutout to me pulls, it will automatically play "I'm gonna fucking bury you! I have done it before and I will do it again!"
Alternatively, if it detects music it begins jumping up and down screaming "YEAAAH!"
It also doubles as a L'il John costume.
I've done a mad scientist costume a couple years, and my favorite prop starts with one rubber chicken.
Add fake eyeballs with LEDs wired through them. Flashing LEDs or wiring up a bread board to make them flash is extra points. A knife switch wired to turn the eyes on and off is a delicious addition. Resistors may need to be placed in series with the LEDs depending on the batteries used. Batteries are of course placed inside the body of the chicken.
Decorate liberally with old serial/parallel ports from old computers, scraps of wire, resistors and other interesting looking electronics equipment. I've even had a serial cable running from the chicken to an old defunct laptop.
Electronic gizmos, such as a cheap box from Radio Shack or similar which can record a couple seconds of sound and playback always add to the fun.
I have rigged the chicken with coathangers and fishing line so I could move the head around puppet-like.
Frankenstein bolts in the neck are easy to accomplish... a bolt can easilly be held on with a nut inside the neck and one outside the neck.
Stitch the whole thing up coarsely with thick black thread, possibly leaving a hole to be able to get to the battery/make spot repairs.
Best accompanied with a labcoat, miss-buttoned white or light blue shirt, rubber chicken tie poorly tied. Brown dress pants or curdoroys, one leg tucked into the socks. Bright yellow chuck taylor's make good shoes, although clunky dress shoes work too. A pair of welding goggles (don't have to be worn on eyes... up on forehead is good enough) is good. Having poofy hair which can be costume painted white/gray is great, although a white wig from a costume shop does the trick too (better if gray/bluish highlights are added with costume paint.) And of course, an Erlenmeyer flask or graduated cylinder to drink from (Red Bull works well, with or without liquor.) Pocket protector, comically large syringe (preferably real 60cc syringe with no needle) stethescope, doctor's head reflector, and other medical trinkets always a plus. Black facepaint/ash to simulate explosion leaving clean goggle lines is good for effect, but seems to be counterproductive in actually talking to people.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I don't have any myself, but I typically rig up various moving things from assorted bits I have laying around the house.
... if you're looking for a durable fog machine, you might want to look at a music store -- they're intended to be lugged about, etc, as opposed to the cheap ones that show up in Target and the like at this time of year.
A quick search pulls up books like Animatronics: Guide to Holiday Displays, which seems to be right on target.
The problem is, you don't even have two weekends left to get stuff done -- if you need to look for odd parts, or mail order something, it's really, really, late to be planning anything big. (yes, we typically do a conversion the day of halloween, so no one sees it too far in advance, as it's outside, but we've been doing it for years, and already have the stuff, and plenty of people to help.)
Oh
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Hallowe'en is now the second-largest holiday cash generator for businesses, right behind Christmas.
People spend hundreds of bucks each on parties for ADULTS. Or go to any bar on Hallowe'en and try to say there isn't some serious coin being raked in.
It's #2 in terms of revenue, but its #1 in terms of profitability, because you don't see the wild discounting like you do weeks before Christmas.
You can always find something to buy on Christmas Eve - just TRY to find a costume the day before Hallowe'en - you'll be stuck wearing a "costume" you made from a roll of aluminium foil you scrounged from the pantry and some duct tape.
I have a good friend who is a geek and at times a bit of a bastard who is always comming up with things like this (not just for halloween) mostly because they live in a really creepy house anyway- but here are some ideas mostly from him.
Get a Y shaped fiberoptic cable and place it out of the way in a dark corner with two of the ends pointing away from the corner. Set up a red LED at the other end of a timer...instant glowing red eyes from the darkened corner.
You can set up a ghostly appirition by taking a box with a 1-way mirror facing into the box, fill it with some smoke from a fog machine, and have a projector shining in from the back. The image bounces off the mirror and hits the back of the box and the smoke gives an interesting halo effect to the whole image.
Edit a video file to include random static and ghostly images and burn to DVD or stream from your computer- pretend like it's just a regular movie (The original Night of the Living Dead is available as public domain from Archive.org if you don't want to worry about copyright infringement and was a good scary movie). This can work even better if you record a movie off the TV with commercials and all so that it may be less obvious what you are doing.
Set the Air Conditioner on a timer so certain rooms can develop "cold spots".
A lot of digital video camers will pick up Infra Red light from things like TV remotes- this is a good way to create fake "orbs" in photos or videos to spook out your guests.
A good, edible fake blood can be made with corn syrup, corn starch (to thicken it and make it less transparent) and red food coloring.
A few more general notes, remember that things are often a lot more freaksom if there is less of a setup, include some really hokey and poorly done tricks to put your guests at ease, this can make the good stuff more effective. Also remember that panick spreads- so make sure to act freaked out and assure your guests that you had nothing to do with your tricks- this can make the entire thing much more effective. Also try to make sure that things are less predictable, if a spooky noise sounds off every time someone walks down a hallway it can ruin the illusion.
Try to get a couple of other people "in" on the setup before hand- that way you have a pool of people who can set things up so that your guests don't learn to expect something every time you excuse yourself to the kitchen or bathroom.
Above all, keep in mind that the scariest things are generally unseen or heavily veiled, props that are too goesh (grammar nazis, I tried to find the correct spelling of this word to no avail, anyone care to help?) often turn out to be humerous instead of scary.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
"Teenagers are largely minors" Really? Who would have thought?
Also very cost effective, since you only need 1 cheap suit. (and walk around on your knees in the TC version)
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
The "time tunnel" effect is always a crowd pleaser. Drill a hole in a penny and press it onto the shaft of a small DC motor. (It needs to be almost, but not perfectly, perpendicular to the shaft.) Glue a small mirror (1" square or less) onto the penny. Turn on the motor and bounce the beam off the spinning mirror. Add some fog to the room and dim the lights, and you've got a very cool effect indeed. (Wrap a rubber band around the barrel of the laser pointer to keep it on, and tape it into position near the spinning mirror.)
Or you can build two spinning mirror assemblies and generate lissajous patterns. (Think: Spirograph)
Or use some hot glue to tack a tiny mirror onto your speaker's woofer. Bounce the laser off the mirror while you play loud music, and you'll get all sorts of wierd patterns.
Or lay a CD-ROM on your turntable (you do still have one, right?) with the reflective surface up, and bounce the laser off the disc. (The narrow tracks act like a diffraction grating, splitting a single beam into multiple beams.) Slowly rotate the turntable platter (especially with the disc slightly offset from center) to get more effects.
Have a look at my site for some idea of the types of effects you can produce.
Here are a few other sites that might give you more ideas:
LaserFx.com
Sam's Laser Faq
Halloween for me always means the start of the annual Nethack Tournament! So hook it up to your big screen TV and put on your +5 Amulet of Geekiness!
The same thing happened to me this week but with a kernel panic / core dump. I knew the existance of that screensaver and would have laughed if it was a BSOD but the kernel panic was a different story.
Scariest screensaver ever made.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
If your parties are anything like mine, a bathroom with no lights might be a little scary during the party, but will be absolutely horrifying the next day.
Some see the vessel as half full; others see it as half-empty; We pour it out on the floor and laugh
In my old house I hooked up a camera, speakers and a strobe light to my front doorstep. When guests arrive the speakers would blast a scream and the strobe would go off. The camera would take a photo that resulted in a unique souviner that costumers could take home - a photo of themselves scared s**tless!
Another neat little thing you can do is get some kind of laser (brighter is better) and then affix a mirror to the cone or dustcap of a bass speaker (one that you don't particularly care about) so that it projects onto the ceiling. Get spooky patterns with your spooky music as the vibrating mirror projects moving light onto your ceiling or wall.
This sig is certified free of self-referential humour!
you'll be stuck wearing a "costume" you made from a roll of aluminium foil you scrounged from the pantry and some duct tape.
/. That's everyday wear.
It's
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
Oh NO! It's the blue screen... of DEATH!!
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Well, you can always be the hit of the party with the chicks:
With any luck, they'll say "Oh yeah? Prove it!"
Of course, this being Hallowe'en and all, be careful not to hit on the woman dressed as a hooker - that might be me (you know how crazy we denizens of Kanuckistan can be :-)
Well... you could have a blacklight at the door of one of the back bedrooms so when a chick exit everyone can look and check for "glow in the dark liquids" around around her mouth ;-)
Libertas in infinitum
Oh NO! It's the blue screen... of DEATH!!
Get some poster-board, paint it blue, put some hex on it, tie it to your chest, and go to a party as the BSOD.
Table-ized A.I.
"Blue screen of death !! What can be more scary ?"
A screen grab of a bash prompt that reads 'man mount'?
"Derp de derp."
We usually go to BSDM play parties for Halloween. Or host them, if we really feel like it.
:)
Kinky and/or goth girls really know how to party.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Flipping through the back pages of SA while at the dentist office, I saw this neat gun the blows fog rings lit up by blue leds. They even have an Airzooka verison.
A couple years ago I built a fog machine based on plans I found somewhere on the web. It was very simple to make and cost under $10. I've always meant to put up my own web page showing how to do it, but you know how that goes. It's not that hard though, especially if you are a true geek. Basically you get a used electric iron and mount it upside down in a shoebox-size box, with a drip mechanism that drips a glycerine and water solution onto the iron, and a computer fan at one end blowing in. Needless to say, you wire the fan and iron to a switch.
For me the hardest part was making the drip mechanism and getting the drip rate right. You want a drip rate of several drops per second but not a running stream. I bought a used aquarium pump but it ran WAY too fast. So I ended up using gravity. I mounted a 2-liter pop bottle upside down on top of the box, with a piece of plastic tubing epoxied through a hole in the cap, extending down into the box. I fused the end of the tubing shut with a candle flame and poked several pinholes in it until it flowed right. Initially the thing stopped dripping after just a few seconds, so I had to poke a hole in the pop bottle's bottom end (which was at the top) to allow air to enter. Then the drip rate was too fast, so I heat-sealed some of the holes in the tubing. It was trial and error, and it ran a little too fast when the bottle was full and too slow when it was low on juice. Some sort of slow pump would work better. But what the hell, the parts were free.
The drops of glycerine instantly boil away to dense white fog when they hit the hot iron, and the fan blows the fog out the other end of the box. Commercial fog juice is a 25% solution of glycerine in water. A 12-oz bottle of glycerine costs about $8 at the drug store. Mix it with 3 parts water and you're there. This quantity will last a couple hours.
The fog machine emits steam, which rises. To make the fog float along the ground you need a chiller, which you can build with an old styrofoam cooler. Cut a 3-inch hole cut in each end, with a tunnel of wire mesh connecting the two holes. You fill the cooler with ice and put the fog machine up against the hole at one end. When the hot fog passes through the chilled tunnel it will stay close to the ground. You don't actually need pieces of plastic pipe or anything, unless you want to duct the fog somewhere.
Instead of using my fog machine to fog up the living room I made a cemetery in the front yard. I had various slabs of styrofoam lying around from who knows what, in thicknesses ranging from 1/2" to 2". If you don't have any just get a 2x8 sheet of rigid foam insulation an inch or two thick. I cut out tombstone shapes with a scroll saw, and for good measure cut a few cracks and other defects into the edges with a serrated kitchen knife. Then I used a soldering iron with a large tip to carve out lettering on each one. The foam melts away at the touch of the iron, and the result has a nice deteriorated look. Then I spray painted the tombstones gray and then sprayed lightly over with black in a haphazard pattern to distress them.
I mounted the stones in the yard using a coat hanger stuck in the bottom of each one and into the ground. Lighting fog from the side looks really good, so I hung a lawn spotlight in a large bush about 15 ft away, downwind of the graveyard, shining through the leaves at the tombstones. The tombstones themselves were standing at an angle to accentuate the shadowing inside the carved letters. It made the lettering really visible. On the upwind side I set up the fog machine and aimed it toward the sidewalk. As the fog came out the slight breeze blew it gently across the yard, through the graveyard and toward the light. My wife hung small stereo speakers in the same bush as the spotlight and we had creepy organ music playing. All in all it was a really cool effect.
That would be a "Terpsitone" - originally built in the 1930's. Bob Moog helped a group of students at Harvard build a new one a few years ago.
A pre-built fog machine costs about US$20 at most larger stores and is temperature regulated so you don't poison anyone, making it a wiser investment then strapping your clothes iron, a drip mechanism, and a small fan together (quieter and easier to work with too!). Also keep in mind the fine glycerin smoke can trigger asthmatics & other folks with breathing problems, and leaves a thin greasy layer on EVERYTHING if used indoors (walls, ceilings, windows, dishware, flooring, into cabinets & rooms you thought were better sealed...)
While on the not-a-good-ideas theme don't go adding scents, colorings, or other "effects" to the fog. After being scalded on the hot plate and then blown around they never do more then smell nasty, gum up the works, and again, are potentially hazardous to inhale.
From a fella who spent a half hour prepping his for machines this afternoon my advice is outside, in a sheltered area (wind destroys it), and spooky but not pea-soup. The cooler trick is a good one, and a great use of an end-of-season beat up cheapy foam cooler. A chicken-wire tube between two holes, a load of ice, no fan needed, warm rising fog goes jetting in one end and comes out nearly as fast but spookier ground-hugging fog at the other end. You can even use a short bit of dryer hose if you need to 'pipe' the fog. Oh, and a black cloth hides the cooler, but leave the fogger exposed as they get very hot and need to be refilled occ. My favorite places are hemmed in by shrubs, which I hang some more black cloth around the bottoms to help dam in the ground fog. A bit of lighting helps to show up the fog, nothing like a red or purple glow fromn down low to add yet more atmosphere...
Sound also helps immeasurably! I use my collection of old came-with-it computer speakers, hidden up in trees and in shrubs, for effects. I plug them into old tape & CD players, then every hour do a circuit around the property restarting 'em. Mix your own audio, and don't be afraid of long periods of quiet rustling, or even silence, punctuated by loud effects. A surprise sound is scarier then walking up to a cacophony of moaning / creaking / screaming. Never underestimate the terror of a real person either; stationing an accomplice in a closet or bushes to make appropriate sounds is incredibly effective, just make sure they're up for a longish stint at it.
For other effects one of my preferred is the good old black light. You have to be careful however, many of the little purple holiday lights labeled "black light" don't actually emit any UV! Test anything you buy ASAP and bring it back for a refund if nothing glows. The best values are the medium tube lights, around US$15 for a 24" one with fixture. Or get a bunch of the incandescent bulbs for US$1 each and gang them up, stick in corners, behind props, use aluminum foil reflectors to direct their light.
For making stuff glow under black light the classic is any laundry whitener, "Whisk" is one of my favorites. Paint with it, rinse cloth in it, it's a powerful UV reflector (why your clothes look so bright when washed with it!) Many toothpastes are also dosed with strong UV reflectors, for that blinding-white-in-the-mirror effect (that dissipates down your throat within a few minutes).
However my personal favorite is black light hair spray. Found in many party supply shops this time of year it costs around US$2/can and goes on nearly transparent, perfect for applying stencils to surfaces (including windows & mirrors!), clothing, or body parts. Right now I've got garage windows full of cheap black & white 'haunted face' plastic masks sprayed with the stuff ready for the room-of-doom next week. Cost was a US$1 75 watt black light, 6 US$1 masks, and that US$2 can of hair spray. Same for my own hair and outfit this weekend out at adult parties, normal until the black lights go on then covered in
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Essentially, the software monitors 5 switches fed into the parallel port. When the state of one of those switches is set, the software respons by firing any of 8 relays tied to the parallel port. Scripting is supported.
In our current setup, I use a weird setup of old PC's, relay cards, input boards, etc, to switch 110VAC, 12VDC, and 24VAC. We tie these lines to our air valves, lights, and whatnot. The software can also play audio files, so it is pretty trivial to create Thunder and Lighting effects.
And, along the effect lines, check out the super-easy to make light flicker circuit. Go fetch a standard extension cord, cut one of the sides (as if you were going to install a switch), and install a 4 watt flourscent lamp starter. Plug a low-wattage lamp into the cord, and the cord into the wall. You will get a nice flicker effect.
Things to note:
Have fun, good luck!
-- I