Congrats to Our Halloween Giveaway Winners!
These three wicked winners are taking home free PCBs!
As we transition from spooky scares to snowflakes and sweaters, Hackster members have been busy writing up their 2021 Halloween projects. Three creepy creations caught our eye, and thanks to OSH Park, will be receiving $30 gift codes to order Alex's "Ouija" ESP8266 programmer PCBs – or to fabricate circuit boards of their own design.
Let's see the winners!
Alie Gonzalez's Halloween Rave Glasses
With SparkFun's new SkeleBoard and a few concentric LED rings, Alie created a wearable homage to EDM DJ Rezz. The animated glasses show dizzying whorls of sparkly red, diffused by covers of laser-cut black LED acrylic. Thanks to the seasonal SkeleBoard (which is a re-skinning of SparkFun's ESP32 Thing Plus), Alie may upgrade these in future with wireless app control.
Tommy Bianco's Halloween Pendant
This Hallo-wearable features an adorable 8x8 red LED matrix, as part of a wearable Arduino shield that can respond to audio and switch between animations (including a Pacman-style face and ghost, a heart, and a little angry face). Tommy used a guitar pick to tune the device's sound sensitivity with a potentiometer, wore it out to a party, and shared the full layout and code in their write-up.
Edison Science Corner's Smoking Halloween Pumpkin
This mist-erious, 3D-printed pumpkin has plenty of smarts! When an infrared human/obstacle detector is triggered, the pumpkin pours mist from its frightful face, fueled by a 555 timer and piezo disc. This creator provides an in-depth video of the project's creation, so you can follow along next year to upgrade any pumpkin (real or plastic) with some high-tech effects!
Special Mentions
This season yielded a ton of amazing projects! Here are a few others that we just couldn't leave out:
DIY Halloween Pumpkin Using Arduino – These little PCB pumpkins are controlled by an Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect! They use cutting-edge smarts to blink their LEDs.
Bluetooth Controlled RGB LED Strip – Despite the simple-sounding name, this project is an awesome, pumpkin-tacular wall light, complete with bluetooth control!
Boo-lues Fire Breathing Pumpkin – If a mist-breathing pumpkin just isn't enough, you can upgrade your porch with actual fire! Just beware, tell the kids to take care, and don't lose more than your arm hair...
Many thanks again to OSH Park for donating the gift codes; they are our go-to shop for prompt purple PCBs and the beautiful "After Dark" colorway, which gives Alex's ESP-01 PCB its magical looks.
Congratulations to our Hallo-winners, and thank you to everyone who shared their work! We're spoiled to have all these talented creators in our community. 🎃