The New Home Haunt Experience

I love Halloween 👻. Every October the streets of Burbank come alive with some of the most creative and entertaining home haunts found anywhere on the planet.

Last year, I came up with this great idea for a Voodoo themed Halloween display. I wanted to create something that Burbank, and Halloween enthusiasts everywhere, had never seen before. I didn't want to use the usual set of static decorations or buy the same animatronics as everyone else; instead, I decided to create an animated halloween show, set to music, with custom decorations that I'd create myself. I also had this idea of integrating an interactive experience that allowed the audience to engage with the display. I really wanted an immersive presentation that's truly novel and unique.

So I started looking for ways to build it. The Big Box Store Halloween gear was expensive and you couldn't really customize it. When I looked online for tools to build custom animatronics, I didn't find much, and what I did find was either too limited, too expensive, or both. Off-the-shelf controllers felt like they were designed for a different era: somehow overly complicated to configure and yet too basic for anything beyond simple repetitive animations. All of it was priced well beyond what a passionate home haunter should have to pay.

I was at a crossroads: Should I just make do with those options, or could I try to create something better?