How to Automate a Haunted House with a Motion Sensor

When working with special effects, the most important part is timing. So for this Halloween, I am doing a series of projects that use simple DIY sensors to help you automate your Halloween setup. So far we have covered pressure plates and proximity sensors. This week, I am going to show you how to use motion sensors to activate your special effects.

There are a lot of small motion sensor modules that will connect directly to your microcontroller. These output a HIGH signal whenever they detect motion. You can read this with a digitalRead function and then have your microcontroller activate any number of special effects. You can either use a commercial shield or make your own.

If you want to activate AC devices you can also modify a motion sensor that is already designed to work with AC. In this project, I took motion-activated security light and I turned it into a motion-activated AC outlet.

There are a lot of ways that you can use a motion sensor to help you automate your Halloween setup. Then after Halloween, you can use it to automate your house.