Halloween Costumes

I have been working with my younger daughter on our Halloween costumes, but have been procrastinating.  This weekend, I need to make some huge movement in working on them.  Of course, they are nothing simple, why would I do that.  Also, why would I not start six months ago, instead I just kept saying we should do this. 

But back to the costumes, I talked my daughter into being Little Sister, and I am going to try and get Big Daddy finished by Halloween.  Now hers is pretty easy in comparison to finishing up.  We purchased a dress, and I bought some parts for the Little Sister ADAM syringe.

• Gas Pump
• PVC pipe
• PVC Connector
• Wooden Dowel
• Glass jar
• Red LEDs
• Red Gel
• Baby Bottle Nipple

I have the basics completed for the syringe, I need to drill some holes and paint it.  I'll update with pictures in a future post.  

Next is my costume, which I have about the part of the dome built (paper mache). Now I just need the rest:

Boots

Painters coveralls

Drill

Tanks for the back.

Like I said should be easy right?

I think I will try and do the drill with paper mache this weekend.   I plan on picking up some EVA mats from Walmart for the boots also this weekend.  Hoping to get some real headway this weekend, just need to stay focused.  

I'll also add some photos from this costume as its being built.  

Winner of the Makezine DIY Halloween contest

Announced today are the winner of the Makezine DIY Haunts contest.

I hope that they display some of the other entries that were submitted so we all get a chance to see some of the great projects.

Third Prize Winner: Paul Hale's - Clown Coffin
Second Prize Winner: Tony DeRose's - Saphira
Grand Prize Winner: Paul Martis' - EL Jacob's Ladder


Hop over to Makezine and check out the video's of the projects.  Great job everyone.

Makezine DIY Haunts contest ends tonight

Just wanted to send out a reminder that Makezine DIY Haunt contest ends tonight.  I cant wait to see some of the entries and who the winners are for this year.  Maybe I will be able to try some of these projects with my daughters or at least come up with some new idea's for projects.

I guess this also signals the end of Halloween as we move to the next holiday and see what we can tinker with.  Like I said not to sure of what type of projects we can do for Thanksgiving but I will try anyway.

Halloween Carnival a huge success

Tonight our neighborhood had a Halloween carnival and I think it turned out great and was a huge success.  There were many games for the kids to play and machines were rolling out the fog.  Everyone seemed to be having a great time tonight.

There was a ring toss, a bean bag toss, balloon dart, and spin the wheel to name a few, they even had a witch's station.  I was running around with my youngest daughter from station to station (mostly one since she like to repeat them multiple times).  The candy and deserts were also very good, but then again I love candy.

Dark detecting LED Ghosties have been created

Earlier tonight my daughters and I created the two LED Ghosties that I have been working on for about a week.(one for each daughter).  I was planning on making three, right now I am kind of glad I only made two.  I thought I did enough pre staging of the parts but nope took a bit of time.

The first part in building of the Ghosties are in the previous posts:
Evil Mad Scientist (Dark Detecting LED Pumpkin)
First circuit build
Second circuit setup

Now that you are caught up on the initial stages here is the link from EvilMadScientist about the LED Ghosties.

Second Dark detecting LED built

I started this one at about 9pm tonight right after I finished eating dinner, and finished by 11:30pm.  Not to bad, getting better at this maybe soon I will get them done in a reasonable time frame.  If I had better skills and better accommodations where I was working I could have probably gotten it done a lot quicker.  Who's counting anyway the important thing is that they are done.

I think I did a better job this time with the soldering, not 100% better but better anyway.  I will have to take a class or something.  I also need to pick up so different color wires, everything is black again so it will be a guessing game were what goes to what, but hey it only really needs to work for Halloween right?

Its late and I need to get started

I got a flu shot today so I decided to take a nap after work, it was 7pm when I woke up.  But I needed dinner so I threw together some jambalaya, but I still need to get started on the second dark detecting LED.

With only a few more days I need to be prepared and ready to go with them to make the ghosts with my daughters.   I will try and start tonight hopefully it wont take to long to do it this time.  Might be an issue though that the tip is no where near pointy anymore, guess I will see.

I will post some pictures of the second one, hopefully it will look a little better then the first.  Will probably still be messy, but at least it should work.  I picked up some more "sheets" for the ghosts, and will have my daughters draw circles for the eyes so during the day you can see eyes.  At night the eyes will light up yellow, or maybe red if I can find the red LED's.

I figured out the dark detecting LED

With a constant eye on Evil Mad Scientist website, i sat down on a crude makeshift desk and started to try and piece together the dark detecting LED.  Mind you I don't remember the last time I tried to solder things, so I already knew this was going to be a long day.  I started probably around 5pm, and finished around 9pm (yes I know I am slow).

Its pretty crude looking and using the same color wire for everything so yea I would get pretty confused but I had to work with what I had which was not much I guess.  After initially putting in the batteries it light right up and I figured it was messed up.  But I decided maybe my room was not bright enough (hmm wonder if the first project might not have been a failure).  So I took it directly to the light and turned it on and what do you know the LED's stayed off.  Brought it off the light source and the LED's turned on.

Only one more of these to make (and I was planning on three of them) Three little ghosts.  First have to finish making the second LED setup.  Hopefully tomorrow's will go a lot quicker then today.  A few things I learned along the way.

1.  Tips of soldering irons burn away (yea I know its been a while)
2.  Its a pain to solder on the small perfboard.
3.  I need a real desk
4.  Need those alligator clip hands that I saw at other sites.
5.  Need a better camera to take pictures with.

Digikey box in the mail.

Tonight I received the package from Digikey to make the Dark Detecting LED.  I wonder if I should start with a bread board first to make sure I know what I am doing.  I am far from an expert with soldering.  I will have to check the website again to see if there any straight directions.

I can see the picture of the board, but I'll see if I can work it out.  I wish there were more detailed directions as I learn to solder.  O well, it will still be fun.  Once I get three of the  boards built I will get with my daughters and we can work on putting them together to make the dark detecting LED ghosts.

That should be fun, hope to have it all done before Halloween, not to many days left now.

Halloween pumpkin carvings.

These are not your usual pumpkin carvings.  I was at Michaels and purchased to decorative pumpkins about a week ago for another project that I never got the parts for.  But since I had them sitting around I decided to have some fun with my daughters today.

With these pumpkins I don't have to worry about them getting old or decaying, and I also don't have to worry about them catching fire.  They are also a lot lighter then a normal pumpkin.

The first pumpkin was "carved" in the most basic sense of the word with the Mr Potato Head "Skeleton Head".

Waiting for parts for new project

I gave up my search for parts here in San Diego, I would have thought with a Fry's I would have been set.  But Digi-Key to the rescue and hopefully in a few days I should have some parts (LED/Resistors/Photo transistors), should be fun.

I can't wait, now I need to brush up on my soldering skills, which we all know are pretty sad if you saw the last post about them.  After Halloween I can see what other projects I want to do.

I still want to send the camera up in a weather balloon, I think that will be fun for my daughters well the initial watching it go up and then trying to find and see the pictures taken with it.

After that well it all depends on how much the above one costs to do.

Need some ideas for decorative pumpkins.

The other day I picked up some decorative pumpkins from Michaels with the intention of doing the cool LED as posted earlier, but I think that might be over my head, and budget at the moment.  So now I have a few pumpkins sitting around and trying to think what I could do with them.

It would be even better if I can get something together so I can create something with my daughters so I don't need it to be to technical.  I can maybe prebuild a few parts so my daughters can help just in connecting, but I need idea's.  

Also I don't really need to be spending tons of money, so that also might limit what I can do.  I wish I had a fog machine that would be cool probably to have it pumped through a pumpkin, but there ya go again.  Thirty or more for the machine, and what ten bucks for the liquid.   But I would want it to make cold fog to sit on the ground so that would be more money (more fun though). 

But back to the pumpkins, any idea's?  I was just going to do some pumpkin carvings with the girls on the the decorative, but I want to spice it up beyond that.  I still need to get a few parts for the ghosts and I hope I find the parts soon, or get them ordered online soon.  Which ever comes first I guess.  

  

Dark Detecting LED Failure

Today was not so much of a good day that I would have hoped for.  I was able to find most of the parts locally for the dark detecting LED, but not the exact photo transistor LTR 4206E, not sure if I will be able to find that one locally to begin with.

Even still I decided to try my hand at making one of them.  I think the last time I tried to solder anything was up 15 years ago at least.  Not to mention that my room and table was probably not the best place to try and solder something.  I had everything connected correctly but even with the battery the LED still lit up even when the lights where on in the room.  Not sure what I did wrong in any event I found another one that looks to be from the same site and a little easier.

So tomorrow I will go out back to Radio Shack and pick up these extra parts, hopefully wont cost to much more to try and get at least one of these up and running.  Besides the new design is made for two LED perfect for a set of eyes.

On a side not I also melted plastic garbage bag when I was moving my soldering iron, cant stand the smell of that, but a little air freshener, fan on high and out of the room for a bit and it was cleared up.  Tomorrow I can worry about cleaning of the melted plastic from the iron.

If anyone has any idea of where to get the parts in the San Diego area please let me know.  (mainly the photo transistor)

Here's a list of parts for the basic design (with two LEDs):

• A phototransistor (we use type LTR-3208E)
• 2N3904 (or similar) transistor, QTY 2.
• 5k ohm resistor
• Yellow or red LEDs, QTY 2. (We used 10 mm diffused yellow LEDs)
• 50 ohm resistors (one for each LED)
• Battery holder with 2 AA-size alkaline batteries

Scaring up some LED Ghosts

I was once again looking for some projects for Halloween and came across Evil Mad Scientist building ghosts.  I went out over the weekend and picked up a few more LED's at Radio Shack and an on/off switch as I was thinking of having them strung up in a series of say 3 ghosts on a tree and would like on button to turn them on.

After more research I found another post over at the same website about dark detecting LED which I think I will try and use on the ghosts instead.  I will have to make another trip to Radio Shack and pick up the rest of the parts to test it out.

Halloween is near and projects are starting.

As we roll into October and get more near Halloween I am thinking of some spooky projects that I can setup with my daughters to put outside.  I do not want anything expensive out there, just some cool gadgets that either make noises are flash colors.  I would love it to be motion sensitive also, but thats just a added benefit.  It should be able to be powered by a few batteries, I would rather not have to have it plugged into a socket.

Leading up to this I was on make magazine today and saw the LED pumpkin and I already was leaning towards a tombstone that did sort of the same thing.  I will have to read up on it and see what else that I maybe able to add to my idea's.

First things first is I need the parts.  Once I have this project in motion I will post pictures and updates for everyone.  If anyone else has some good idea's for easy and spooky props for Halloween leave a comment.  I would like them to be able to be built with the help of children so nothing to exotic.

Mini Pumpkin trebuchet anyone?

About a week ago I was talking to my older daughter about something and we got onto the topic of pumpkins  being that its close to Halloween (the best holiday by far in my books).   While we were talking I asked her if she wanted to see some pumpkin chucking and well that brought up a new idea for a project that I know has been done many times.

First thing I need to find is the TV show so I can show my daughter what I am talking about, how can you not be excited about this, watching pumpking being thrown hundreds of feet.

I have already made the compressed air rocket launcher so I want it to be something differant if I build something for the pumpkins.  I also will be using mini pumpkins because I would think they would be safer (probably not, but in my head they seem better).  Next I would need a location, I think I have a place, wonder what they would think of a Trebuchet in a park, also how would I get it there.