Before we started our Halloween projects, several of the Pololu engineers took a trip to a local Halloween store to get inspired. At the store there was a wall lined with the polystyrene foam tombstones that are meant to be stuck into your front lawn. They immediately made me think of the graveyard outside the haunted mansion at Disneyland, and I knew that I wanted to make one of them shake and scream. For added effect, I also picked one that had a few skulls on it, so I could place red LEDs in the eyes. Below are some of the details that went into making the project so far. Continued…

After doing the creepy mask, I wanted to do something a bit more festive. This Halloween prop was inspired by those inflated decorations people put on their lawns. In this case, I wanted something a bit smaller since I wanted it to fit indoors. I also wanted to use one of our addressable 8mm RGB LEDs, so I could make it light up all sorts of colors instead of just a single color like I had often seen. I decided to make an inflatable ghost because I wasn’t sure I would be able to control the shape that well and figured a ghost would give me more leeway in shape. Continued…

If you have been following our blog, you have seen some fun and scary Halloween projects posted by my coworkers here at Pololu. Well, this is the first part of my prop for my costume for this upcoming Halloween. After watching an animatronic devil baby terrorize New York City, I knew I wanted to build a similar demon baby that would be attached to me with a baby carrier. Continued…

This project turns a innocent-looking ghost decoration into an ambush in wait for unsuspecting passersby. The basic idea is straightforward: whenever someone walks within a few feet of the ghost’s face, it blasts them with a terrifying burst of compressed gas. Continued…

If you read Grant’s Creepy eyes Halloween prop post, then you already know that several of us here at Pololu are working on Halloween projects. I based my project on a motion tracking Halloween prop tutorial by Jason Poel Smith that I saw last year on the Make magazine website. The concept is simple: make a Halloween prop mysteriously follow an unsuspecting person as they walk by. The tutorial by Jason Smith uses photoresistors to track a person by detecting their shadow and moving a servo with a Halloween prop attached to it. This works well, but there are a few things that I thought could be improved. Continued…

In the lead up to Halloween, I thought it would be fun to make some Halloween-themed props; in particular, I was interested in making something creepy. What first came to my mind was one of those creepy portraits with moving eyes. To change it up a little, I decided to use a mask instead of a picture (which I thought would make it easier to hide the electronics). Down at a local store called Halloween City I picked up a cheap mask and some plastic eyeballs (though a more crafty person might just make their own mask and eyeballs). I made sure the mask was a bit stiff because I needed it to hold shape without actually having someone’s face in it. For the electronics in the project, I grabbed two sub-micro servos, a Micro Maestro, and a 4.8V battery pack. If you don’t have jumper wires it might also be helpful to get a pack of those, but this build only uses one to jump battery power to the Maestro’s logic power. Continued…

The 2pi, built by Mark Moran, is a line following robot based on our 3pi robot. The 2pi uses our 100:1 micro metal gearmotors, motor brackets, 32mm wheels, 1/2″ ball caster, QTR-8RC reflectance sensor array, and U3V12F9 switching step-up voltage regulator. All those components are mounted to a chassis that was cut from PVC foam.

The robot uses a custom made PCB with an ATmega328 as the brain (the same AVR chip used in the Arduino Uno, some of our Orangutan Robot Controllers, and, of course, the 3pi). You can see the 2pi following a line in the video below.

For more information about how Mark built his robot, check out his Instructables guide.

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	100:1 Micro Metal Gearmotor LP 6V
	Pololu Wheel 32×7mm Pair - Black
	Pololu Micro Metal Gearmotor Bracket Pair - Black
	Pololu Ball Caster with 1/2″ Plastic Ball
	QTR-8RC Reflectance Sensor Array
	Pololu 9V Step-Up Voltage Regulator U3V12F9

Pololu forum member spiked3 recently shared a sophisticated robot he made called RoboNUC. It uses a Netduino and a LIDAR module and was intended to help him learn simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). SLAM is a technique used to map an unknown environment and keep track of the device’s location within the environment. Using SLAM, the robot is able to characterize the surrounding areas without needing to physically navigate them. RoboNUC uses our 1″ plastic ball caster, and the acrylic chassis was laser cut using our custom laser cutting service.

For more information about this robot, including a parts list, please see the RoboNUC Recap blog post at Spiked3.com.

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Custom Laser Cutting Service

Heikki Leivo and Matti Koljonen are currently working together to develop a miniature autonomous electric boat, which they are calling Leviathan. The boat is made of polystyrene foam, uses brushed DC motors and servos for movement, and is controlled by a Raspberry Pi, which reads data from GPS and a MinIMU-9 inertial measurement unit for navigation. Leviathan is equipped with a camera and also features a D24V6ALV step-down regulator for powering servos and other electronics. The boat is also controllable over WiFi.

The electronics inside Leviathan.

Matti and Heikki plan for their vehicle to be able to run pre-defined routes, capture photos, and record video, among other things. You can learn more about Leviathan on its website.

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	Raspberry Pi Model B+
	Pololu Step-Down Voltage Regulator D24V6ALV
	MinIMU-9 v3 Gyro, Accelerometer, and Compass (L3GD20H and LSM303D Carrier)

Robert Stephenson (blobbington) posted about his robot dinosaur, Roboceratops, on the Trossen Robotics forums. Roboceratops is a small robotic dinosaur built to resemble a member of the Ceratopsian group. It uses a total of 14 servos for movement that are commanded through two of our Mini Maestro 12-Channel Servo Controllers, which are controlled by serial commands from his custom hand held controller. The controller is directly wired to Roboceratops and uses an Arduino Mega 2560, an LCD screen and two 3-axis joysticks. Robert wants to improve his design by making it wirelessly controlled and battery powered, and he plans to eventually make Roboceratops autonomous.

Roboceratops is mainly constructed out of laser cut MDF, but the legs are made from aluminum square bar. Upholstery foam was added to the legs to make them look more like real legs. The case of the controller and the neat carrying case at the end of the video also appear to be laser cut.

Related products

	Mini Maestro 12-Channel USB Servo Controller (Assembled)
	Arduino Mega 2560 R3
	Custom Laser Cutting Service