Before we started our Halloween projects, several of the Pololu engineers took a trip to a local Halloween store to get inspired. At the store there was a wall lined with the polystyrene foam tombstones that are meant to be stuck into your front lawn. They immediately made me think of the graveyard outside the haunted mansion at Disneyland, and I knew that I wanted to make one of them shake and scream. For added effect, I also picked one that had a few skulls on it, so I could place red LEDs in the eyes. Below are some of the details that went into making the project so far. Continued…

Last month, we introduced our new carriers with Sharp GP2Y0A60SZLF analog distance sensors, a part we are very excited about and have been trying to get for the past five years. Those complete sensor modules ship with the GP2Y0A60SZLF installed on our compact carrier board, which includes all of the required external components and provides a more convenient interface to the sensor (and a mounting hole!). Well, we are now offering the carrier boards without the sensor for those who already have Sharp GP2Y0A60SZLF units and are looking for an easy way to incorporate them into their projects. The carrier boards are available in two configurations: a 5V version for operation from 2.7 V to 5.5 V and a 3V version for operation from 2.7 V to 3.6 V:

For more information, see the product pages.

Related products

	Pololu Carrier for Sharp/Socle GP2Y0A60SZLF Analog Distance Sensor, 5V
	Pololu Carrier for Sharp/Socle GP2Y0A60SZLF Analog Distance Sensor, 3V
	Pololu Carrier with Sharp/Socle GP2Y0A60SZLF Analog Distance Sensor 10-150cm, 3V
	Pololu Carrier with Sharp/Socle GP2Y0A60SZLF Analog Distance Sensor 10-150cm, 5V
	Sharp/Socle GP2Y0A60SZLF Analog Distance Sensor 10-150cm

Get FREE copies of Circuit Cellar magazine’s October issue and Elektor magazine’s October issue with your order, while supplies last. To get your free issues, enter the coupon codes CIRCUIT1014 and ELEKTOR1014 into your shopping cart. Each magazine will add 6 ounces to the package weight when calculating your shipping options.

For back issues and more information, see our free Circuit Cellar magazine offers and free Elektor magazine offers.

Related products

	Free Circuit Cellar magazine October 2014
	Free Elektor magazine October 2014

After doing the creepy mask, I wanted to do something a bit more festive. This Halloween prop was inspired by those inflated decorations people put on their lawns. In this case, I wanted something a bit smaller since I wanted it to fit indoors. I also wanted to use one of our addressable 8mm RGB LEDs, so I could make it light up all sorts of colors instead of just a single color like I had often seen. I decided to make an inflatable ghost because I wasn’t sure I would be able to control the shape that well and figured a ghost would give me more leeway in shape. Continued…

If you have been following our blog, you have seen some fun and scary Halloween projects posted by my coworkers here at Pololu. Well, this is the first part of my prop for my costume for this upcoming Halloween. After watching an animatronic devil baby terrorize New York City, I knew I wanted to build a similar demon baby that would be attached to me with a baby carrier. Continued…

This project turns a innocent-looking ghost decoration into an ambush in wait for unsuspecting passersby. The basic idea is straightforward: whenever someone walks within a few feet of the ghost’s face, it blasts them with a terrifying burst of compressed gas. Continued…

If you read Grant’s Creepy eyes Halloween prop post, then you already know that several of us here at Pololu are working on Halloween projects. I based my project on a motion tracking Halloween prop tutorial by Jason Poel Smith that I saw last year on the Make magazine website. The concept is simple: make a Halloween prop mysteriously follow an unsuspecting person as they walk by. The tutorial by Jason Smith uses photoresistors to track a person by detecting their shadow and moving a servo with a Halloween prop attached to it. This works well, but there are a few things that I thought could be improved. Continued…

Halloween is just a few short weeks away, and that means it’s time to start making an awesome costume or building an extravagant yard display (unless you’ve already been hard at work on one for months). Whether you want to dress up or decorate your home, we offer lots of products that can make your projects stand out, so we’re having a Halloween sale to help you get the parts you need!

From now until October 22, you can get 10% off hundreds of products, from servos and LEDs to sensors and programmable controllers. Even bigger discounts of up to 30% are available on a few select items. See the sale page for more details and the full list of products.

As always, we would love to hear about anything cool you make with our stuff, so please share it with us via email or on our forum; we might feature it on the blog! This month, we’ll be posting a series of Halloween-themed projects of our own to help inspire you.

Remember the post I wrote two weeks ago about our tiny D24V25F5 voltage regulator and some of the testing that we did on it? Well, we were so happy with how that regulator turned out that we decided to make a higher-power version with a larger inductor and beefier MOSFETs. This new regulator is the D24V50F5, and while it is only 0.1″ bigger than its 2.5 A cousin, it can deliver 5 amps!

Side-by-side comparison of the 2.5A D24V25Fx (left) and 5A D24V50F5 (right) step-down voltage regulators.

You can see the bigger MOSFETs on the bottom side:

Comparison of the D24V25Fx (left) and D24V50F5 voltage regulators showing larger MOSFETs on the higher-power board.

The D24V50F5 can also take inputs up to 38V and has typical efficiencies of 85% to 95%. It’s amazing how much power these little 3×3 mm MOSFETs can handle, and with its compact size and high power, this regulator is our new favorite.

Related products

	Pololu 5V, 5A Step-Down Voltage Regulator D24V50F5
	Pololu 5V, 2.5A Step-Down Voltage Regulator D24V25F5

In the lead up to Halloween, I thought it would be fun to make some Halloween-themed props; in particular, I was interested in making something creepy. What first came to my mind was one of those creepy portraits with moving eyes. To change it up a little, I decided to use a mask instead of a picture (which I thought would make it easier to hide the electronics). Down at a local store called Halloween City I picked up a cheap mask and some plastic eyeballs (though a more crafty person might just make their own mask and eyeballs). I made sure the mask was a bit stiff because I needed it to hold shape without actually having someone’s face in it. For the electronics in the project, I grabbed two sub-micro servos, a Micro Maestro, and a 4.8V battery pack. If you don’t have jumper wires it might also be helpful to get a pack of those, but this build only uses one to jump battery power to the Maestro’s logic power. Continued…