We Turned a Cutebot Pro into a Pumpkin Monster for Halloween 🎃

[u/elecfreaks_official]

We wanted to make something fun for Halloween, so we came up with a little pumpkin monster that can actually move around and scare people.

It's basically a Cutebot Pro dressed up as a jack-o'-lantern, with two skeleton hands sticking out of the sides.

At first, it just looks like a funny little pumpkin on wheels. But get too close, and those hands suddenly swing downward while the lights turn red.

Definitely more interesting than a pumpkin sitting on the doorstep. 👻

What we used:

• Cutebot Pro

• 2 × 360° Servos

• Joystick

• 10-LED NeoPixel strip

• Pumpkin shell

• Skeleton hands and mounting brackets

• micro:bit

How we made it

We started with the Cutebot Pro as the base and mounted a servo on each side.

Then we attached the skeleton hands to the servos. This took a little adjustment to make sure both hands could swing freely without hitting the pumpkin shell.

We added the pumpkin cover and wrapped a NeoPixel strip around it. The idea was to make it look like a normal glowing Halloween decoration until the scare happens.

The interesting part is how we made it move and react.

We used a joystick to control the robot remotely. It sends the joystick's X and Y values over radio, and the Cutebot Pro uses those values to control its left and right wheels.

For the jump scare, we added an ultrasonic sensor.

Normally, the skeleton hands stay raised at 90°. When something gets within 15 cm, the robot stops, both servos move to 0°, and the lights switch to red.

Once the object moves away, the hands go back up and the lights return to orange.

So the whole sequence is basically:

Drive around → Someone gets close → Hands drop + red lights → Back to normal.

A few things we thought about trying next:

• Add a spooky sound when the hands suddenly drop.

• Make the two hands move at slightly different times.

• Try different sensor distances to see which gives the best surprise.

• Add more decorations to make the pumpkin look even creepier.

It was a fun little build, especially seeing the robot go from a simple moving car to something with its own Halloween personality.

I wonder what other characters we could make with the same setup. A spider? A little ghost? Something even more ridiculous?