Ten Points Random

Let’s see, so I bought a house, switched to Linux and now am hacking away at this:

K'nex, RC servos, a Phidget, and if you look closely, me!

Codename: TelePlaymutte.  ‘Cause I wanna play games remotely.  VOIP, CheckersOIP, DNDOIP, etc.

So, this last Halloween I had some fun with the kiddos that come around asking for candy.

My garage this past Halloween

Last year I did something similar, but simpler.  This year was a bit more complex.

It seemed simple enough a task for the trick-or-treater: walk in, enjoy the spooky ambiance (and random lasers stabbing thorough the upper level of fog), grab a reward from the yellow glowing pumpkin, and move on to the next house.

Right?

Looking up as you walk in

Not with me around.  (Haha – trick or treak? Trick!)  With the help of my sister, we ushered all the, um, victims into the cage (a repurposed dog “kennel”).  Once the kids were sure the smiling Goth-dressed-female wasn’t going to bite them, and that everyone was clear of the door, the lights would suddenly drop out.  An enormous thunder and lightning strike from directly in front of them would illuminate a monster, arms outstretched and ready to grab them!  Before anyone could but turn around, the door to the chain-link cage would swing shut, chains clanking loudly against the metal.  You were trapped!

Though you could get away without a trick? Didja?

And then . . . we let them go.  We didn’t scare the really litl’ ones.

Here’s an AVI movie, I’ll have to get me a flash player setup sometime.  The microphone normalises stuff too much so you can’t really hear things.

By the end we had fog, black light, strobes, lasers, subs, amps, a laptop . . . so pretty much an instant rave party afterwards.

Behind the scenes

Thanks to the fam for helping get things setup!

My old chair mat died, the cheap plastic didn’t hold up well under the constant stress of my constant, shifting weight.

What to do?

Build one.

Using our friendly less-than-seven-dollar waferboard, I cut, beveled, and sanded it to fit custom into the space my old one used to fill.

Add some selective sanding to smooth it and add an abstract design…

Here it it:

The hard floor is sooo nice to roll on.

Also, unlike what you would expect, the floor isn’t too bad on the bare feet, but YMMV.

So here’s what I got:

The whole thing plugs in via USB and acts like a regular joystick – the four pedals are four different axises on the controller.

And the whole thing is pegged onto a circutboard from a regular controller.

More on this later.