In the video the Spooky Dropper is setup to deliver a bat right in front of the victim. It could drop a spider, ghost, rat or anything else you can dream up! It can reset itself automatically using one normal servo and one that has been modified for continuous operation. This is begging to be hooked up to a motion detector or even the door bell circuit to launch at just the right time. To see the full documentation of Vern Graner’s project have a look at the Halloween edition of Nuts and Volts Magazine.

If you have a Halloween project of your own, why not add it to the list of projects in the Show us your Halloween Project Contest.

Remember Carl that made the Spinning RGB LED Ball Display? He has also built a wicked RGV Laser System! I can just imagine using this at the center of a big party. You would have to pass out eye protection though.

"Three laser beams in primary red, green and violet are combined with the optics harvested from an HD-DVD drive to make white. The total output is 350-400mW, and wavelengths are 660, 532 and 405nm. The homemade TTL constant current driver modulates the lasers to simulate over 16 million colours from an ordinary RGB LED-circuit with PWM, amplified by transistors."

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Guitar Hero is very popular these days but like any piece of equipment that gets tons of use it will break or wear out. The basic warranty is only 90 days so fixing it yourself will become necessary in many situations. Have a look at the Guitar Hero DIY Repair Guides from the guys at 5FRETS for some great tips.

"Unfortunately, the Guitar Hero World Tour guitar has notoriously unreliable and failure-prone strumbar switches – sometimes failing right out of box! I bought mine during the October 2008 midnight release and it lasted about 4 months before it started doublestrumming on its own. At first I noticed the menu jumping two songs when I only clicked one, and shortly afterwards it ruined my gameplay."

I shudder at the thought of soldering up this Surface Mount LED Array from bear24rw. Have a look at the build, the circuit board was designed and etched by hand and the picture documentation is very good. These are the same guys that made the RFID Doorm Room Unlocker.

Thanks Max.

"The driver we choose to design was highly inspired from this one. The basic idea is that you use shift registers to sink the columns and a line driver of some sort to source the rows (we chose to use a Darlington array).

There where a lot of changes from the Instructables design that that we had to make however. The matrix in the Instructables was a lot smaller than ours and used 8 IO lines to drive each row. Since our matrix has 16 rows this was completely infeasible using just an ATMega168. To solve this issue we choose to use a 4:16 de-mux to control all sixteen rows with only 4 IO pins."

Gadget Gangster has a new project called the Simple Servo Tester. It allows you to plug in up to two servo motors and test them with a simply turn of a dial. You can purchase the project in kit for here if you are interested in adding this to your test equipment.

"A little bigger than a postage stamp, the Simple Servo Tester lets you control two digital or analog servos without using a transmitter or receiver, just plug in your battery pack to start testing. Use it to check your servos before installing them into your models or to center your servos when setting up linkages. The Simple Servo Tester can also be tuned to precisely center your servos - Some manufactures consider 1.520 milliseconds to be center while others use 1.500 milliseconds. Use it anytime you want to operate a servo but don’t want to get out your RC equipment!"

Spookyblue entered the Show us your Halloween Project Contest with this great use of some flashing LEDs. That effect is sure to enhance any zombie or skeleton sitting in your Halloween cemetery!
Via: Hacked Gadgets Forum

"Place a spookyfire "blob" inside a pumpkin, a skull, or anything that would look cool if it were lit with a guttering candle. This effect works great as an indirect light source, but is lessened if you can actually see the blob. The reflected, totally random flicker makes an extremely convincing firelight effect, is very portable, and totally safe."

Art Vanden Berg build a High Altitude Glider Project that has performed 5 flights to date. Have a look at the great documentation of the flight system and flight results. One of the issues we have seen with all of the near space balloon projects that we have featured lately is attempting to predetermine the landing zone and racing there to retrieve the cargo.  Having a plane that can fly back to a known location is a great idea that I think is sure to catch on.

Thanks Andrew.

"A small, self-guided glider, designed to fly at very high altitudes. The glider is carried up by its tail with a helium weather balloon to altitudes of up to 85,000 feet above sea level, and then released to fly back to the launch point. During the flight, it transmits down navigation data, some sense data, and low-res digital photos. It can also carry a 35mm film camera, or other instruments."