A lot of our Halloween 2009 work has been centered on our “store window” setup. We’ve basically turned out front window into a colorful spooky diorama. It’s very cool looking at night, and the moths are going INSANE (probably due to the two black lights we have running).

The trouble is, most of the little kids won’t be out after dark, so I wanted to do something that they could enjoy.

Evelyn had recently put together a voice changer circuit — and I had an “a-ha!” moment — I’d put a voice changer out there for the kids to talk into. The challenge with the voice changer is that you can’t have the speaker close to the microphone, otherwise you get horrible feedback. “A-ha!” number 2: I’d use that limitation to my advantage!

You see, we have a tree right by the curb and the driveway — right where people will walk up (and where we will have our benches set up). I’d hang a speaker high in the tree, run a wire to the front door area, and put the microphone near the door. That way kids can talk into the mic and scare/annoy/amuse anyone who is near the street. Perfect!

At first I was going to put the circuit in a little waterproof box, but I thought that might be too boring looking (and wouldn’t get kids involved). “A-ha!” number 3: I’d put it in a skull or something (“talk into the skull”). I thought a skull might be too scary, and didn’t want to buy a piece of plastic from the Dollar Store, so I went with a pumpkin motif.

First I found a friendly pumpkin design, traced it onto a piece of 1 x 12 pine, and cut it out with the jigsaw.

Now I needed to stick the circuit board somewhere (it has the microphone and the batter). I had a very strong little box that lathe screws come in, so that’s what I’d use. Here you can see that I’m going to attach it to the back of the wooden pumpkin.

See how nicely the circuit and battery fits:

I used a couple of screws and standoffs to hold the circuit board to the plastic case.

All of these bits and pieces come together is you have a well stocked and well organized set of fasteners. You can tell I like to keep things organized. We have probably 8 of these organizers (about 14″ x 10″).

The speaker is apart from the microphone / circuit, so I needed a way to quickly connect speaker wires. I went with the reliable, and easy to install, “banana” jacks. It has thumbscrews so you can use regular wire (like you see of the back of some stereos).

Here is what it looks like with the speaker wires attached and everything tucked in.

The really nice thing about the plastic box is that the cover snaps on/off easily. Plus, it has a little door, so you can easily get at the battery and power switch.

The microphone is soldered to the circuit board. It faces DOWN in all of these photos. What you don’t see if that I’ve drilled a 3/8″ hole in the plastic case and through the thickness of the wooden pumpkin. The kids will speak into this hole (which is roughly aligned to where the pumpkin’s nose will be painted on).

Here is the setup being tested. In this photo you can see some lines drawn beneath the plastic case. That is where the pumpkin will be screwed to a 1×2 post. The post will go into the ground right near our front door.

Tomorrow we’ll need to go to Lowe’s and pick up some orange and black spray paint. The pumpkin will be spray painted orange, and then Evelyn will do the details in black (by hand).

Now that the pumpkin part is coming along, I needed something protective for the speaker (which will be hanging in the tree). I went back and forth a bit, and decided on a simple setup. I’d put the speaker in an old butter container.

The speaker will be firing downwards, so if it rains it won’t get filled with water. (Also, I’m putting this up the day of Halloween, so it just has to survive the day.

I didn’t do anything fancy to mount the speaker in the container, because I decided to use a piece of steel cable to hand the unit. The cable is wrapped around two of the speaker mounting holes, and goes through the top of the lid, along with the wires. Here’s a top view that better illustrates the setup:

Now I needed a way to make this look less like a speaker in a butter container. Great Stuff to the rescue. Now it’s a blob, roughly looking like a bee hive.

What you can’t see in the above photo is that I’ve embedded some more “banana” jacks for connecting the speaker wire. Once the Great Stuff has dried (overnight), I’ll put some sort of speaker grill on the bottom and spray paint the whole thing.

I’ll post some more photos once we have things painted.