A Halloween Scenario with X10!
X10 and Halloween, the ultimate combination for FUN!
As promised,
here’s the article you’ve been anxiously awaiting. Halloween helpful hints that
will turn your house into a haunted house. So without further ado, let’s get started.
To start out, empty everything out of your living room and the room
adjacent to it (if your living room is the first room in your house). You can decide if
you want an old spooky house on the hill, a haunted castle, or a haunted apartment. If you
have a porch, this is a good place to start setting up the spooks. You can, make it look
like the outside of an old spooky house on the hill, or a haunted castle, or a haunted
apartment. Hook up a Hawkeye Motion Sensor and a socket rocket to the porch light. Use a 40-watt bulb so that it’s not too
bright, but does invite the children to your door. In the living room, have only a
bookcase that will act as a secret passage to the next room and two or three lamps with
red and blue light bulbs hooked into ActiveHome Lamp
Modules. In the next room, have strobe lights hooked into an ActiveHome
Module. Or you can use both. Also have a television, and two or three more lamps, again
with blue and green light bulbs. Have your Entertainment
Anywhere hooked into the stereo system cleverly hidden behind some form of
camouflage and your XCam2s. Also
cleverly camouflaged. You will also have to program some macros for the sound effects, but
it’s worth it. I also recommend that you decorate that room with lots of creepy
things like spider’s webs, snakes, and other scary things. Use your imagination.
- So the trick-or-treaters approach your door. As they near the door, they pass a Hawkeye
motion sensor and a chime. The chime lets you know they’re there, and the motion
sensor triggers the lights. The light goes out and they’re standing there in the
dark. With your Entertainment Anywhere
you cue a sound effect of the hollow knocking that you hear when you knock on the doors of
old castles.
- The door opens… I assume that would be you… and in your best Igor
impersonation you welcome the children and take them into an empty room designed to look
like the basement of Dracula’s castle. As they enter, they trigger another sensor,
and the blue and green lights come on. (You could put some spider webbing here to keep it
a looking old and scary.)
- As you approach a lone bookcase along one of the walls, the bookshelf opens, revealing a
secret passage. You enter the next room, and with your ActiveHome Remote trigger the
strobe lights.
- Once the strobe lights are flashing, you point your remote to the television and turn it
on so that the kids can see that they’re on camera. You can toggle between the
various cameras, depending on how many you have. As they’re watching themselves, they
realize that they are being watched by a large raptor in front of them. They must pass
this raptor and as they do you trigger a sound effect of the dinosaur screaming as if
he’s found lunch.
- Then you push off a large rubber snake lying on the casket in the corner of the room,
and knock on the lid. (If you want, you can push it toward one of the kids. Use your best
judgment here.) A sound-effect comes over the stereo of a snake hissing, and a coffin
creaking open.
- Dracula sits up in the coffin, and calls the kids to him. The children are of course
somewhat reluctant. So Dracula hits his remote and the lights behind the kids begin
blinking on and off really quickly and again. A sound effect of hideous laughing
accompanies them. Once more Dracula urges the kids to come to him. And when they approach,
he offers them the candy that they’re asking for. Then he lays back down in the
coffin laughing in his evil way.
- Then Igor/(You?) leads the children back out of the house. He turns off the television,
and turns off the strobe lights. He cautions them not to wake the count as this might make
him grouchy.
- As the children enter the empty room, and the bookcase closes, the lights again begin to
flash and the sound effect of a woman screaming and an evil laugh is heard. Igor laughs
and lets the kids out of the house.
- As the children pass the sensor again, this triggers Robo-Dog who begins barking furiously. You
can bang on the doors and windows to make it sound like you’re holding the dog back.
(Note: I would use the dog at the end here rather than the beginning. This way the
children who are frightened of dogs won’t be afraid to enter the house believing
there’s a real dog in there.)
And there you have it. You’re very own haunted house. And it won’t take
anything but a few X10 products, and a little imagination. If you’re looking for
ideas, then visit us at our web site.
And Good luck.
Send comments or feedback on this article to xzone@x10.com
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