My friend "Charley the Ghost".

Halloween is coming up.... So I decided to make a scary ghost decoration patterned off an article that appeared in Nuts&Volts magazine, Oct issue. The project is a cut out display that has movement and sound and light. A small child walks to the door and a light goes on, the ghost waves his arms and a spooky voice  warns of goblins and spiders. 

I made him from a piece of foam core board, two servo motors, a sound circuit and super brite LED and a PIR (Passive Infra-Red) movement detector triggered from a knock off Aruduino UNO board. When the PIR sensor is triggered by any warm blooded creature, the ghost springs to life all powered by a solar powered battery. Well, a 12 volt Solar powered and a small 9 volt battery. It was fun to make and the programming gave me some unforseen challenges to contend with. I think I will make some more of these for Christmas. Here are some pics of the proto-type. 

Above you can see the "Guts" of the ghost. At top is a four channel relay, the middle section is a bread board and at the bottom is the Arduino Uno. You can just make out the servo behind the Arduino and the one at far left bottom of picture.

You can see the sound board dangling as it fell down right before the shot was taken. I had an old speaker laying around salvaged from an old boom box with no housing or cover. I used a card board box that a clock came in to act as a speaker cabinet. I cut a hole in the bottom of the ghost and glued the "Speaker Box" in from behind.

His name is "Charley"  :)

Here is an early video of Charley in action.