Struggling with decorations this Halloween? Do away with the cobwebs and deploy gadgets for the ultimate scares.
CBR lists five creepy ways IoT can be used to create the perfect haunted house.
1. Spooky Lightning
Smart home technology is now available to the masses and offers homeowners the control of several elements in their household.
One advantage of owning such systems during Halloween is that they could be programmed to create a flashing haunted house via lights.
A company that already has products capable of real-time monitoring and interaction is D-Link. Via a mobile app, users can control several elements of the house besides lighting.
2. Ghost drones
Struggling to create a ghostly haunting? Why not put that drone to good use and create a hi-tech ghost – easy seeing as they both fly.
Dressing a drone with a ghostly outfit can certainly deliver the ultimate Halloween experience.
Either decending onto unassuming trick or treaters, or jumping out at friends and families, its sure to create some fun frights.
3. Devices that know what you did last summer
If you are having guests over for Halloween, having an IoT device like Amazon Echo is by itself a conversation topic.
But by programming Alexa – the female voice that lives in the Echo and gathers information from the cloud – you could inject a psychic element to your haunted house and throw away that ouija board.
4. Smart smoke machines
You have the lights, the ghouls and the psychic – now all you need is a creepy mist to create the perfect Halloween ambience.
Just like with lighting control, smoke machines can also be managed at a distance, and by using SmartThings for example, users can even pre-programme specific times when smoke should be released.
5. Spooky Smart Sounds
The CBR haunted house is nearly complete – ghosts, lighting, mist, but to achieve multiple scares, sinister creaks, screams from the undead and zombie moans must be included. Using a smart plug from SimpleLink for example, will enable all sorts of decorations to be remotely controlled.
The SimpleLink CC3000, for example, enables the use of a Wi-Fi enabled smart plug that lets users bring zombie sounds to life, frightening passers-by.
Bluetooth controlled speakers, when installed, also control music and/or "zombie talk".