Ghoul Grabber

In this instructable I will be teaching you how to build:

A step sensor for less than a dollar (or even free!) (I was the first to post this!)

A delayer(to power your items for a given amount of time (the most simpe way possible)

And a ghoul grabber

That's right, you get 3 for the all low price a couple of dollars!

The step sensor is steps : 1-10

The delayer are steps: 10-15

The ghoul grabber is steps: 15-27



Trick-or-Treat!

You can make a good, reliable sensor for less than a dollar! All you need is some aluminum foil and paper! This type of sensor is really just a giant momentary, normally on, switch.

Roll of heavy duty aluminum foil

A roll of paper (used in stuff like type writers and god knows what, you can buy them new or at garage sales/thrift stores)

That's it!

measure the walkway in front of your house that leads to your door. Mine was 42 inches wide

cut 6 strips of paper so that the length of each paper is 2 inches longer than the width of your walkway, so I cut each piece of paper 44 inches long.

Cut the aluminum foil the same length as the paper, but this time you only need two sheets.

tape two sheets back together so that it's now almost 2x as wide as before. Do this 3 times so you have 3 sheets of paper. This step is necessary because the width of the aluminum foil is wider than the paper.

using your hobby knife, cut strips out of one of the sheets of paper. Make sure that each strip is less than 1 cm wide or you'll run into problems later. The design of your cuts do not matter.

glue one strip of aluminum foil to one of the sheets (one of the non cut-up ones) in the center. Do the same for the other one. Now you have a sheet of paper with aluminum foil stuck to it, a paper that looks like gills, and another sheet that has aluminum foil glued to it.

sandwich the layers of material like this:

paper
aluminum
gill paper
aluminum
paper

tape the edges together (not too tightly) and you're done! Whenever you step on it the 2 pieces of aluminum foil touch, acting like a momentary switch.

now you have your sensor you need a delayer. What this does it keep your motor (or whatever) on even after you step off of the sensor for a predetermined time.

breadboard

electrolytic capacitor(s)

12volt spdt relay (from radioshack, I used this one )

jumper wires and alligator clips

I used 3 capacitors (I couldn't find one big one) in parallel to get my timing device. When choosing your capacitor about 1100 uF equals 1 second. so to get 5 seconds (I think it's a good time) then use 5500 uF.

can't really help you hook everything up, but here's the schematic I came up with.

hook all of the connections up and your done! I used a breadboard because halloween is one day a year, and I want to keep my parts, such as the relay.

the ghoul is the main part of this instructable, yet can be made within an hour for mere dollars.

motor (make sure it's strong, mine wasn't strong enough so I couldn't add to many decorations)

a skull (picked up at Michaels for 5 dollars)

2x 24 inch piece of wood

2x 20 inch piece of wood

1x 12 inch piece of wood

1x 6 inch piece of wood

1x 4 inch piece of wood

NOTE: the kind of the of the wood doesn't really matter, between 1 and 2 inches wide are good, the thickness of the wood should be kept to a minimum, like around 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch.

5 inch long dowel

some scrap wood

some big piece of wood for a base

old white dress shirt

8x nuts and bolts

a bunch of washers

note that all holes are to be centered, but it doesn't matter a whole lot
note that all holes should be wide enough so that the bolt slips through easily (but not the head)

on both 2 foot pieces of wood drill a hole on each ends (about 1 inch from the end). Next drill a hole in the center of both pieces of wood. You should have drilled a total of 6 holes.

on both ends of the 1 foot piece of wood drill a hole 1 inch from the end.

for the 20 inch piece of wood line up the bottoms with the 1 foot piece of wood and drille holes so that it's like the 1 foot piece of wood, with more wood sticking out. the holes should be around 1 end, and the center.

for the 6 inch drill on both sides about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch from the edge.

on the 4 inch piece of wood do the same as the 6 inch piece of wood

connect everything as you might expect with nuts, bolts and washers. the 2x 2 foot woods are parallel, the 12 inch wood bisects it, and the 2 20 inch woods extend from the ends of the 2 footers. Glue on the dowel a bit off center as shown in the picture. Don't worry about the 4 and 6 inch wood yet

elevate a little island on your big board so that you can rest your structure on it. glue the board to the 12 inch wood like in the picture.

attach the 2 short pieces of wood as shown.

depending on how strong your 12 volt motor is you drill a hole in certain places. the stronger your motor the closer to the center you get, the weaker the motor the closer to the "arms" you get. Don't mind the motor in this picture.

attach the motor to the crank you made.

attach the crank to the hole you drilled in step 22. You can then use a clamp to hold the motor down.

Your ghoul is now ready, you now just need to make it look scary!

put a dirty shirt on the structure. if you want to you could even drop some red food dye for blood. I had to cut my shirt because my motor was too weak because the shirt was dragging on the floor.

glue the skull onto the dowel and your done!

if you want to you could add on another relay and have that control power going to speakers that are playing ghoul like sounds. Alas I don't have an MP3 player or speakers.

YOU'RE DONE!!! WOOHOOOO!!!!!11 (<-see the one there?)!!! You should be proud!