Don’t agree with it ,never did it or allowed my kids to ,an American fad which is basically demanding money with menaces

What a load of bullshit. Guising as its properly known is ancient and has nothing to do with demanding anything. You turn up you do your piece you get a reward. The adults get to scare the kids and the kids spew all overthemselves as they come down from their sugar high.

Its traditional.

Its quite sad to see everybody sheperding kids though isn’t it?

Thankfully undisturbed this evening (especially as we got nothing in).
Kids aren’t bothered and both fighting off colds.

Fireworks in the garden with friends next weekend and a nice open fire (not near the fireworks obviously) . That will be good. 😀

Some suggestion that it came to the US from Scotland anyway.

Klunk owes me half a pint which I’ve just spat out…ha.
I’m with Edric,basically begging for sugar.
We’ve just had 8(!!) under 4’s at ours,fire in the garden,apple bobbing,toffee apples & toasted marshmallows .total sugary carnage.
I think it might be a three pint night.

I used to be incredibly negative about it in the way some of the posters on here appear to be. Now it’s one of my favourite occasions – as well as my animatronic skull, much fun was had with the kids making a graveyard on the front garden* and I also enjoy going round seeing what other people have done.

* yes that does sound all wrong, CBA rephrasing!

How did you animate the skull aracer?

I saw a design for one using a Raspberry Pi in the latest issue of MagPi, but didn’t have the time or willpower to do it. Maybe next year.

The pub was rammed tonight lots of levels people in costumes. Some very lovely ladies out in some surprisingly sexy outfits. Who knew Mario could be female and look so hot.

I’m down in Brighton visiting family and spent an hour or so sat on my sisters front doorstep with a glass or two of wine while groups of kids came round as it seems massive down here. All good fun. My brother in law says that next year he’s really going to get into it and make their house the best/most scary on the street. I live in a rural area so have never had anyone come round.

Who knew Mario could be female and look so hot.

Knowing you are local(ish) I’m hoping that wasn’t the same female Mario that we had in – because she goes to the local high school 😕

My missus popped to the shop, bought a load of sweets, locked the door, pulled the curtains and turned all the lights out at about 6pm. Can’t seem to find any of the sweets now, although I don’t recall hearing the door go even once. Weird.

Always prefer bonfire night anyway, much more fun blowing shit up and setting fire to things than dressing up like a wazzock.

I find this whole American tradition very odd.
Like tramps begging, but a bit more more Jimmy Saville.
Any old weirdo with a penchant for children can leave a bowl of sweets out and attract them to their door!

It’s got an RPi in it 😉 Has had one of those in since 2012. The previous year I had the same plastic skull with an AVR controlling the servo for the jaw and a mini sound recorder for the audio – more impressive in a way, as I had to program the movement of the jaw into the AVR to match the audio. The RPi just uses the real time amplitude of the audio out to move the jaw, which works a lot better than you’d think, so just send it a wav.

RC servo for the jaw, LED eyes, PIR in the nose. All connected straight onto GPIO. Audio amp and speaker connected to the audio out, powered by a LiIon battery through a UBEC, and naturally has a wifi dongle so I can control/reprogram it from the laptop when it’s in place. All my own design and software, and it’s working well enough now I should do a proper write up – shame it sounds like I’ve been beaten to that.

Around here we use the “lit pumpkin” method. If u have a pumpkin on it doorstep/window & it’s illuminated then knock the door, no pumpkin no knock. Seems to work & those who don’t want to be disturbed are left in peace

40 miles away I think I’m safe Graham.

Why do people keep saying its American thing?

[url=https://flic.kr/p/AfdZZh]Tory Halloween[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

Late last night, just before I was about to settle down for bed I had a small knock at my door. This is a very odd occurrence, no one knocks at my door.
Turned out to be a neighbour from the other side of the road and she had a cat in her arms. Asked if it was mine, clearly not I said and she then said “thought not, but do you know whose it is”? Next door, try them I said, turns out the cat had been hit by a firework…
Now I’m not a fan of cats at all, but did feel sorry for it.
🙁

Because they’re miserable?

Lit pumpkins here as well – I noticed some people had “no trick or treat” notices up, but they shouldn’t really need to bother. Also very friendly – no tricks from the couple of (young teen?) lads who knocked on the door when I was putting the kids to bed and I apologised that we were out of sweets – in retrospect I wish I’d raided my kids’ collections to give them something, though more disappointed that I’d turned my skull off, so they didn’t get to see that running. So it’s not really “trick or treat”, more “trick and treat”.

All my own design and software, and it’s working well enough now I should do a proper write up – shame it sounds like I’ve been beaten to that.

I’d read it! Nothing new under the sun but it sounds like a good project.

You’d probably be interested in the version in MagPi issue 38 (PDF version is free).

Your automatic mouth sync system sounds a bit like something Ben Heck did:
[video]https://youtu.be/NeCQA9zGOwA[/video]

Well I’m encouraged reading that, because whilst I only have the jaw moving he has no audio and I’m using no additional electronics apart from the audio amp (he’s wrong about a RPi only being able to control 2 servos – the software I use which uses DMA in the firmware can I think control up to 8 with precise timing – certainly I’ve got 3 channels as I’m using it to control 1 servo and independent PWM dimming of the 2 eyes). I might be tempted to add moveable eyes just to prove a point about the servo control, but my skull’s a bit smaller than that and I’m tight on space – don’t have a neck as I like the way mine “floats” in midair – somebody asked how it was floating, so clearly the fishing line was hard enough to see.

I can’t believe I’m the only one to have jaw sync working on a RPi, but I’ve also got other ideas to make it interactive – given I can do the jaw sync in real time I’m thinking about a mic in the RPi and using VOIP so I can “talk” to somebody through the skull.

Interesting stuff! My OrangePi (yes, really!) arrived yesterday, £12 for a Pi 2 clone. This sounds like a good project 🙂

Made a tunnel of cobwebs from the garden gate to the front door, covers with plastic spiders & illuminated with several carved pumpkins, lots of little visitors who all seemed to enjoy having to battle through the hanging cobwebs to get to the door. All the sweets went & several kids told us the display was ‘wicked’ and ‘epic’ etc, one little lad seemed very surprised that I’d carved the pumpkins & not bought them like that, which I found slightly sad…

Those cobwebs were brilliant BTW, 99p from the cheap shop up the road & there was that much I ended up looking like Ms Faversham !

Ooh, interesting – it even has the mic I’m after, though would be a lot more useful as a connector rather than on-board (other versions seem to have on-board wifi and SATA connectors, though they’re a lot more expensive). The trouble is, whilst it’s equivalent to a RPi it doesn’t look like it’s compatible (not surprising as it has a different GPU) so can’t use RPi images and won’t have the same support.

I’d be very surprised if my code worked with that either as it goes into the firmware below the OS control – I need to make changes to that to make it work with RPi2

Had one knock on the door early yesterday evening, then nothing after that; perhaps people are learning that if a house isn’t decorated, the inhabitants don’t do ToT.
I’m not trying to be a grumpy git, I’m 61, my dad’s 91, I have no other family locally with small kids, it’s just not something I want to get involved in.

Raspbian won’t work without some serious tweaking. I’ve got Debian Jesse on it and that went on without a hitch. I’ve got the cheap Orange Pi PC model.

Had a few but had plenty of Quality Street left over… Well it was a few om nom nom!

Thanks for the report – worth risking £12 on I guess if it will run something decently (I’d seen reports of people failing to get it running). If the specs are accurate it’s running at almost twice the clock speed of the RPi2, so if the OS doesn’t get in the way too much it might do significantly better at running some things.

Hated it as a child.
Hate it even more as an adult.
I’m not American.
Cable tied the gate shut, was not bothered.

Wow, you sound fun.

‘American’

Like mountain biking. 😀

Cracking night, pub for pizza and pumpkin carving, lap of the village with some of the neighbours, home for a spooky disco with half a dozen little monsters. Kids to bed, bottle of wine. Fantastic.

‘American’:

The wearing of costumes, or “guising”, at Hallowmas, had been recorded in Scotland in the 16th century and was later recorded in other parts of Britain and Ireland.

There are many references to mumming, guising or souling at Halloween in Britain and Ireland during the late 18th century and the 19th century. In parts of southern Ireland, a man dressed as a Láir Bhán (white mare) led youths house-to-house reciting verses—some of which had pagan overtones—in exchange for food. If the household donated food it could expect good fortune from the ‘Muck Olla’; not doing so would bring misfortune. In Scotland, youths went house-to-house in white with masked, painted or blackened faces, reciting rhymes and often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed. In parts of Wales, peasant men went house-to-house dressed as fearsome beings called gwrachod, or presenting themselves as the cenhadon y meirw (representatives of the dead). In western England, mostly in the counties bordering Wales, souling was common. According to one 19th century English writer “parties of children, dressed up in fantastic costume […] went round to the farm houses and cottages, signing a song, and begging for cakes (spoken of as “soal-cakes”), apples, money, or anything that the goodwives would give them”.

Guising at Halloween in Scotland is recorded in 1895, where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit and money.

The practice of Guising at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported children going “guising” around the neighborhood.

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick-or-treating

Very very popular in our road. Must have had a hundred children. Made watching the time-shifted second half of the RWC final a protracted affair.

Anyway, lots of nice comments on my pumpkin carving drilling skills 😀

About five minutes if work.

Note that in guising, souling etc. something was offered (a song or a play) in return for the “treat”.

Note that in guising, souling etc. something was offered (a song or a play) in return for the “treat”.

Much like the kids getting all dressed up, then.

Note that in guising, souling etc. something was offered (a song or a play) in return for the “treat”.

So think yourselves lucky that died out!

The treat these days seems mainly to be jokes.

Note that in guising, souling etc. something was offered (a song or a play) in return for the “treat”.

….as it should be.

No child comes to my house at Halloween and leaves with goodies unless they tell a joke or sing a song.

Yelling “Trick or Treat” and holding out a bag for life, just doesn’t cut it.
No group performances either. It’s solos all the way.

Extra bonus sweeties awarded for inappropriate jokes.

No child comes to my house at Halloween and leaves with goodies unless they tell a joke or sing a song.

Yep, that’s fair enough.

In my gaff they have to play the apple game (dropping a carving fork to try a skewer an apple in a bucket of water) and stick their hand in The Bucket Of Doom (black bucket decorated with skull with binbags tight over the top and a small slot for their hand – contains sweets.. and toy snakes, spiders etc)

So think yourselves lucky that died out!

It didn’t. Souling is alive and well.

Yelling “Trick or Treat” and holding out a bag for life, just doesn’t cut it.

Quite right. Same goes for carol singing. These days you’re lucky to get half a verse and a quick “we wish you a merry Christmas”.

In my gaff they have to play the apple game (dropping a carving fork to try a skewer an apple in a bucket of water)

Aye, that’s how I learnt it at home (helped that everyone’s kitchen had without fail lino flooring!) – kneel on kitchen chair with fork in mouth, give apples a stir, drop away.. sometimes given the choice of dookin for apples instead, which sometimes is easier (though with water up the nose..)