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Halloween Hackfest

Trick or Treat, It's Time to Hack Halloween! Bring Your Costume Upgrades, Haunted House Hacks, and Halloween-themed Technical Projects!

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 09:00 am PDT - Thursday, October 28, 2021 11:59 pm PDT Local time zone:
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8.9k views
6 comments
113 followers
45 submissions
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This contest has ended and the winners have been announced! Thank you all for participating!

Be sure to check out all the other amazing projects that were submitted!

Category: Project: Name:
Undead Tech 3-Axis Skull Mod for 12ft Skeleton Nelson Bairos
Haunted Smart House Safety Coffin Grave Bell Glen Akins
Crazy Costume Computer Head Costume Skye Rutan-bedard

Presenting Hackaday’s Halloween Hackfest! 

Join Hackaday, Digi-Key, and our friends at Adafruit for a Halloween-themed contest! We want to see your crazy, creepy, ghostly, spooky, and awesome projects. 

If costumes are your favorite part of Halloween, then why not dress up your outfit with some hacked upgrades? You could even design a ghoulish prop to add to your home’s Halloween decor or light up a Jack-o-lantern with LEDs. Whether it’s technical, artistic, or just plain terrifying, we want to see your projects!

Join us to check out the Halloween Show & Tell with Hackaday, Friday, October 29th at 1pm PT, to show off your awesome projects entered in the contest. Don't forget to also share your projects on social media and use the #HalloweenHackfest!

Hackaday and Digi-Key have partnered on this Halloween-themed contest to offer three winners an online shopping spree to the Digi-Key warehouse!

Digi-Key

Awards

Thanks to our favorite partner Digi-Key, three projects, one from each category will be awarded a $150 shopping spree to Digi-Key. Winning projects that include an Adafruit board will win a bonus of having their prize doubled for a total of $300! 

  • Crazy Costume - Whether your project features moving parts, crazy effects, or enough LEDs to be seen from beyond the grave, the winner of this category will need to create the very best Halloween costume. 
  • Haunted Smart House - If you favor haunted houses, now’s your chance to create your own spooky props. To win this category you will need to create a chilling home modification project that’s worthy of scares. This could be a candy bowl that comes to life, a motion-activated project that startles unsuspecting houseguests, or just about any Halloween-themed home modification you can think of.
  • Undead Tech - The winning project of this category will need to be the best and most technical Halloween-themed project. Whether you’re using modern tech or raising some undead tech from the past, just make sure your project is full of technology and well documented.

We're still on the lookout for the most artistic projects to be featured in the 2022 Digi-Key Calendar. Towards the end of the year, 12 visually stunning projects from our Digi-Key contests will be chosen to be featured in next year's calendar.

Artistic projects from the Earth Day Challenge, the Reinvented Retro Contest, Halloween Hackfest, and future 2021 contests will be chosen. These projects will score a $50 gift certificate to Tindie and have a chance to be selected as one of the 12 featured projects in the calendar. 

Winners may also be asked to participate in the Adafruit Show & Tell if they would like.

Examples

Need some inspiration? Here are some projects to check out that should get your ideas flowing:

How to Enter

Start a new project on Hackaday.io. Share images of your project and tell the story of how you designed and built it in the description of your project.

Once you have published your project, look in the right sidebar for the "Submit project to..." menu to enter it in Halloween Hackfest Contest:

Judging Criteria

Here are some criteria judges will have in mind while reviewing entries:

  • Is your project relevant as a Halloween Hackfest project? (example: costume projects, haunted house prop, or technical...
Read more »

View all 7 contest logs

4.7k
16
22
I hacked apart The Child plush toy from the Mandalorian and added a robotic core.
Project Owner Contributor

The Child: Animatronic hack of Baby Yoda plush toy

kevin-harringtonKevin Harrington

665
660
6
ChatterPi is a software package that turns a Raspberry Pi into a low-cost audio servo controller for talking props.
Project Owner Contributor

ChatterPi

aspiring-roboticistAspiring Roboticist

244
1
2
Halloween Ghost Writer Project. Connect via Wifi and send sequences to be "Spirit Written" on a dusty surface. Scare Kids
Project Owner Contributor

Ghost writing Halloween Project using Ultrasonic

danDan

310
1
1
A cable-cam-inspired robot to fly a witch, or other lightweight ghoul, over unwary tricksters.
Project Owner Contributor

Witch-on-a-Wire Cable Bot

gageGage

All Submissions

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Discussions

mirrorhours78 wrote 08/17/2022 at 12:06 • point

As with angel numbers, seeing mirrored times repeatedly on your phone, clock, or any other digital device can at least grab your attention and make you pause and think for a while.

Mirror hour also referred to as Twin hour, or Double hour, is a phenomenon where the hour numerically equals minutes on a digital device, i.e., same hours and minutes, for instance, 01:01, 11:11, 20:20. Visit: https://www.thefearlab.com/

Broadly speaking, Mirror time is any symmetrical digital hour where the hour and minutes have the same numbers. 

  Are you sure? yes | no

kate06630 wrote 06/27/2022 at 09:42 • point

Halloween Hackfest is a weekend-long event where computer enthusiasts come together to hack on projects related to the Halloween holiday.
Whether your idea has moving parts, wacky effects, or enough LEDs to be seen from the afterlife, the winner of this category must build the best Halloween outfit.

If you enjoy haunted houses, this is your chance to make your own eerie props. To win this category, you must develop a terrifying home improvement project worthy of scares.
For more please visit  www.reecoupons.com/view/insightvacations.com

  Are you sure? yes | no

Kody Alan Rogers wrote 10/29/2021 at 16:25 • point

Hey. I was wondering where the Halloween Show and Tell with Hackaday can be found? Also, I am currently editing an assembly video for the project I submitted and I know it is past the deadline. I was hoping I could post it in a project log. I'll make it explicit that it was posted after the deadline so it shouldn't be judged. I don't want to confuse anyone with adding stuff after.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Crypto wrote 10/29/2021 at 12:57 • point

It's almost spooky time, I can't wait to hack- I mean go trick or treating!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Christoph wrote 10/25/2021 at 20:25 • point

Do you expect a similar contest for next year? Because the project I'm thinking about submitting won't have useful results before the moon has done a few rounds.

  Are you sure? yes | no

stuart wrote 10/23/2021 at 15:19 • point

no more random posters?

  Are you sure? yes | no

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