For BoilerMake 2015, my team made a selfie tweeting pumpkin. Basically, it’s a jack o lantern with a Raspberry Pi, camera module, and capacitive touch sensor inside. When you tap the pumpkin, it tweets a photo with a witty caption and potentially a Halloween-themed sticker.

Halloween is just around the corner, and the spooky themed tips are just starting to roll in. If you’re looking to one-up the basic store-bought decorations, and maybe teach your kid the basics of an Arduino while you’re at it — why not build a Peek-A-Boo Ghost!

Using an Arduino, two servo motors and an ultrasonic distance sensor it’s pretty easy to make this cute little ghost that covers its eyes when no one is around.

Build a Peek-a-BOO Ghost This Halloween
Add Excitement to Your Scary Season Festivities
http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/JamecoBuilds/peek-a-boo-ghost.html?trk_msg=SP2KLF5BU4SKDCPHVKJG09EVUG&trk_contact=7PHJ2U537I0E3PTAH1MQ0UVBVK&utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Ghost&utm_campaign=Newsletter+October+2015

Looking to create fear and dread with your Halloween costume? [Becky Stern] over at Adafruit has you covered, with her tutorial on building a mystical hood with LED eyes, perfect for your next Jawa, Black Mage, or Orko costume.

This creepy-looking creation is based around a Gemma controller driving two NeoPixel Jewels, small circular RGB LED boards. The Gemma drives the boards to slowly fade on and off for the required creepy eye effect, but it would be easy to create other lighting patterns.

https://learn.adafruit.com/mystical-led-halloween-hood?view=all

What takes eight hours to solder and uses more shrink tubing that you thought imaginable? An LED matrix installed in a real pumpkin.

Meet Marty. He’s a pumpkin that has been fitted out with a moving eyes, tongue and an expression of malevolent glee. You would probably assume that this is all driven by servos, right? Nope: Marty is driven by an old-fashioned crank mechanism, designed and built by [Ben Brandt].

http://www.instructables.com/id/Making-a-Moving-Mechanical-Pumpkin/

If you’re looking to build the next creepy Halloween decoration or simply thinking about trying out OpenCV for the first time, this next project will have you covered. [Glen] made a pair of giant googly eyes that follow you around the room using some servos and some very powerful software.

Tracking People with the Googly Eyes and OpenCV
http://bikerglen.com/blog/tracking-people-with-the-googly-eyes-and-opencv/

Halloween may have come and gone, but [Luis] sent us this build that you’ll want to check out. An avid Walking Dead fan, he put in some serious effort to an otherwise simple bloody t-shirt and created this see-through “stomach shot” gunshot wound.

The project uses a Raspi running the Pi Camera script to feed video from a webcam on the back of his costume to a 7″ screen on the front.

Stomach shot – Halloween costume 2014
http://www.instructables.com/id/Stomach-shot-Halloween-costume-2014/

[Stephpalm] had carved a pumpkin for the first time in two decades. Unfortunately, the neighborhood squirrels were all too pleased with her work and devoured it. Her original goal for the jack-o’-lantern was to have its lights controlled over the internet. These hungry critters inspired another project instead – The Jack-’o’-Lantern Squirrel Early Warning System. There have been hacks that have dealt with pesky squirrels before, such as a trap and an automatic water turret, but they didn’t have the ability to post to social media like this system does.