PyCon US 2026 — Lightning Talk Companion Page
If you scanned a QR code from a five-minute talk and ended up here: welcome. Everything I showed and links to additional information is here.
If you didn’t see the talk and just wandered in: I build automated Halloween props as a hobby, often using Python.
The talk
- Slides (PDF): Halloween Lightning Talk
- Recording: [link to be added when PyCon publishes it]
My projects
Pi-Based Multi-Prop Trigger — coordinated routines from one PIR
A small Pi-and-Darlington-array circuit that lets one motion sensor trigger and coordinate multiple props on a timed schedule. The version running this past Halloween had two skeletons holding a conversation. Just about two dozen lines of simple Python code.
- Write-up: https://www.mcgurrin.info/robots/8251/
ChatterPi — talking skulls, in Python
A Raspberry Pi audio-servo controller for talking skulls and similar props. An audio servo controller takes audio input and outputs servo motion commands based on that input. ChatterPi does this with software on a Pi, even a Pi Zero 2, replacing the need for more expensive commercial electronics boards. PyAudio is used to stream either stored audio files or input from a live microphone. Scipy’s bandpass filter is optionally used to apply a 500–2500 Hz bandpass filter while NumPy averages the volume per audio chunk to determine the servo motion for the jaw. GPIO Zero (with a PiGPIO backend for hardware PWM) drives the jaw servo.
- Writeup: https://www.mcgurrin.info/robots/tag/chatterpi/
- Code: https://github.com/ViennaMike/ChatterPi
- Pi image file with ChatterPi installed: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1njfqegJImeXq-ZoW_yuY0TCJ0bTiwWCA
Yorick the Mimic — wireless 3-axis skull control via motion capture
This project captures head motion (nod, tilt, and turn) of a person and wirelessly transmits the position to control the movement of a 3-axis skull. The sensor unit is mounted on a ball cap and consists of a Raspberry Pi Zero W and an Adafruit BNO055 Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) on the brim. The software used is written in CircuitPython. The controller takes the position data sent by the sensor unit and converts it into servo commands to position the skull. It consists of another Pi Zero W and a Pololu Maestro servo controller. The two Pis talk over WiFi via Python’s standard-library xmlrpc.server — no framework, no broker. The IMU streams quaternions 50× per second; the controller converts them to Euler angles and then to servo commands. Wear the cap, the skull mirrors your head.
Other Halloween-Python projects worth your time
The Halloween-Python ecosystem is bigger than my front yard. A few starting points:
- Adafruit Prop-Maker family. Purpose-built CircuitPython hardware for animatronics and props. The PropMaker Jack O’Lantern and Milk Jug Glow Skull tutorials are friendly entry points; the Hacking Holiday Animatronics guide goes deeper.
- The “first Halloween project” tutorials. com’s PIR-triggered jack-o’-lantern and PenguinTutor’s Halloween pumpkin are the easy builds to start with: a Raspberry Pi, a PIR, an LED, and twenty lines of Python.
- Monster in a Box — Hevnsnt’s Monster, a Pi-driven rattling crate, a variation of the classic “something is trying to get out” prop.
- Eye-following Halloween prop — a Bare Naked Embedded writeup showing OpenCV face tracking on a servo-mounted Jack O’Lantern.
The community resource list
I maintain a crowd-sourced Google Sheet of Python libraries, packages, and writeups related to Halloween. It’s open for anyone to view, and there’s a form for submissions of useful libraries, interesting projects, tutorials, and anything else that’s at the intersection of Halloween and Python (lightly moderated, mostly to keep spam out).
- View the list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17wS0RSJGvh6HiEO_fPNP81Zgg-c8R-JK9iXHD4ZfSrs/
- Submit a resource: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ijGOla7xCNAEByTt_v9EQCJpDK7pSbiri1jD3ms9-vA/
If you build something with Python this October, please send it in. The more the list grows, the more useful it becomes for the next person who wants to bring Python to their porch.
About me
I’m Mike McGurrin, aka ViennaMike, and among other things, I’m a computer and electronics hobbyist. My blog is mcgurrin.info/robots. I’m ViennaMike on GitHub. Comments and questions on any of the linked blog posts are welcome.
Happy haunting.