Ideas for Halloween automation?

We are never home for trick or treaters, so we always leave a big container of candy on the front porch for people to grab a handful.

This year I was thinking of doing something fun like maybe:

* Ring doorbell motion event, trigger:
* change the philips huge light bulb color for the front porch to red
* Bluetooth speaker just inside the door, triggered to play a loud scream
* (disable this trigger for some amount of time)

Does anyone else have any ideas like this?

I had been thinking the same. Was planning a hue bulb that was dim white but when motion detected on the porch it brightened and turned to red. Then when door opened a loud scream from inside over the sonos.

[matt (support)]

I hope he doesn't mind, but one of our users (and a plugin developer) is closely involved with this company that makes some really cool automation controllers for halloween, haunted houses, etc. Not exactly Indigo related, but it is cool stuff so I thought I'd mention it.

Wow. Way beyond my need, and ability but looks cool

That's pretty cool, Matt.. i'm surprised they haven't published an indigo plugin!

What'd be really cool for hallowe'en to scare people would be some kind of mannequin made up to look like a witch, and when the scream goes off it shakes or something. I suppose it'd be quite easy to do with a few well places servos and a wee relay, but i guess the cost to reward ratio would be pretty low.. especially as you're not there to witness (or protect) it!

My front door has two different cameras. (Ring camera, and a corner mounted hikvision) . So I'm going to see all the fun this stuff causes.

My front door has two different cameras. (Ring camera, and a corner mounted hikvision) . So I'm going to see all the fun this stuff causes.

In that case hidden hoses to spray kids who take too much candy!

Best I have seen hasn't been full automation but rather people that put witch or ghost costumes on drones and had them fly after people. The YouTube videos are hilarious.

I would love to do a beam or pressure plate or something and have music or some other scary thing pop when they approached, but I would be worried a bit about the very littles ones that come around.

As far as I'm concerned, this is still the gold standard.

Trigger warning: it's Christmas and not Halloween.

As far as I'm concerned, this is still the gold standard.

Trigger warning: it's Christmas and not Halloween.

Those are pretty epic like. The amount of work put into that is awe inspiring. It wouldn't surprise me if planning for it started in January.

I know, right? That might not be the best or most intricate setup these days, but at the time it was epic.

It was.. and in all fairness still is!

Perhaps I should do something like that at me & jays house this year. Except it’ll probably just be a hue light flashing on and off. And periodically it’ll just stop because they do just seem to randomly stop communicating all the blooming time. Perhaps I’ll dress up Jay as a Santa and stick him up on the roof (with araldite)


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[jay (support)]

This one is still my favorite Halloween display. It's dated, but for 2011 it was quite impressive (I think it was the first one I saw that had the singing faces). And I love the music.

I vaguely remember reading about these displays years ago, from memory they used a GrandMA lighting desk which is what we used to use for arena and stadium size shows. The lights were Dmx’d so programming is actually quite easy.


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