Circuit Playground Express Spooky Laughing Box #ElectronicHalloween

The trick-or-treaters clamber up the steps of the next house on their evening route. The porch light is on, but no one comes to the door.

What’s this? On a small table, a spooky-looking cardboard box sits next to a lamp. A sign on the lamp says “Touch Here for a Treat.”

A small but brave goblin reaches out her hand, but before she can touch the lamp, an electronic disk lights up with a ghoulish orange smile, haunting notes play, and the box springs open as if to laugh at the foolish children.

But perhaps not as foolish as they seem … for inside the box are spider rings and creepy crawlies for the taking. They each take a treat and move on in their quest to fill their Halloween bags.

This spooky laughing box comes to life thanks to a Circuit Playground Express, a servo motor, and a power source. The project is easy enough for kids to do themselves (with a little help cutting), and you can decorate it any way you choose.

The CPX’s onboard light sensor is simple to program using MakeCode software to trigger the lights, music, and motion. If you want, you can add extra features like a mouth-opening mode or change up the eerie tunes. Keep reading to find out how!


Adafruit electronic halloween dark HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Every day this month we’ll be bringing you ideas and projects for an Electronic Halloween! Expect wearables, hacks & mods, costumes and more here on the Adafruit blog! Working on a project for Halloween this year? Share it with us in the comments below, the Adafruit forums, Facebook, Discord, Instagram or Twitter— we’d love to see what you’re up to and share it with the world (tag your posts #ElectronicHalloween). You can also send us a blog tip! Tune in to our live shows, 3D hangouts with Noe and Pedro, Show and Tell and Ask an Engineer, featuring store discount codes, ideas for projects, costumes, decorations, and more!


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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

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CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


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