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MAKE

Do try this at home

Spectacular wall art from astro photographer Chris Baker

RUSSELL COBB

Haunt your own house
Available as frameless acrylic or framed backlit
Make scary Halloween stories even more terrifying by up to 1.2 metres wide. All limited editions
adding ghoulish special effects

“I love telling scary stories, to the internet, or being wired
but my tales don’t spook my to a board that is.
children like they used to,” says For example, I could have my
Evelyn Tenshens. “Is there a smart lights flash when I say www.galaxyonglass.com
techie way to give them a fright the word “lightning”, or I could
this Halloween, other than wire a speaker to a Wi-Fi board +44 (0) 7814 181647 Chris@galaxyonglass.com
hiding their iPads?” for ghoulish voices on cue.
Of course, choosing the right
You can’t beat a good scare. trigger words is important. If
One easy way to amp up the you’re speaking of a dark and
adrenaline in your storytelling stormy night, “dark” is a
is by haunting your own house. tempting choice – but a
The key is to create spooky wayward remark about dark
accompaniments to your words. chocolate could spoil the
For that, you need a trigger. A surprise. Even safer bets like
concealed remote was my first “plunged” into darkness could
thought, but you are likely to be result in a downpour of plastic
spotted pushing buttons. The spiders during a chat about DIY.
words themselves would make At least that would be shocking.
the best trigger. But choose overly obscure
To achieve this, I took my keywords and listeners might
programmable Arduino circuit figure out the ruse. Keep them
board and clipped on a device guessing by making some
called 1Sheeld. This lets me triggers more complicated.
control Arduino over Bluetooth Have sensors lying in wait
via the sensors in my phone. and prime them to activate
It offers a shortcut to voice after the trigger word. Perhaps
recognition, which is something a motion sensor in a doorway,
my phone is smart enough to so the next person to leave the
do already. A few lines of code room after you say “pumpkin”
later, my Arduino was ready to gets a face full of pumpkin pie,
make mischief when it heard a or saying “my smartphone
preprogrammed magic word. died in this room” switches off
Next, the props: anything as the router. That last one was
long as they have a way to talk enough to strike fear into the
wirelessly to the Arduino. This hearts of my millennial friends.
either means being connected Hannah Joshua ■

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27 October 2018 | NewScientist | 55