I Built a HAUNTED HOUSE with Raspberry Pi

About this video

NetworkChuck builds a Raspberry Pi haunted house that triggers Halloween props, plays scary sounds and records victims’ reactions, structured by rising spookiness levels and interspersed with scare footage of family and friends. The core mechanism: animatronic props activate when two ’try me’ wires (or a step-pad’s two wires) are shorted together, so a relay controlled by the Pi does the shorting. Level one uses only a Pi and speakers, with a Python pygame script to play a zombie scream sound file (OGG format recommended), triggerable remotely from an iPhone Shortcuts action that runs the script over SSH. He then wires a relay to the GPIO pins — ground, 5V power and the IN1 control pin — and writes Python using RPi.GPIO to open and close it, connecting the prop’s wires to the relay terminals. Next he wires a PIR motion sensor (ground, power and a data/input pin) and polls it in a while loop, so motion automatically fires the relay and sound together. Finally he adds a Pi Camera: enabling legacy camera support, testing with still and video commands, converting H.264 to MP4 with MP4Box, installing the Python camera library, recording when motion is detected, and generating timestamped filenames so clips do not overwrite each other. For the extreme level he adds professional pneumatic props from FrightProps driven through a PicoBoo controller connected to the Pi, plus a vibration sensor hidden in a candy bowl. A sponsored IT training segment opens the video.

Key takeaways

• Most animatronic props trigger when two wires short together, so a Pi-controlled relay can activate almost any prop.
• Relay wiring uses GPIO ground, 5V and a control pin, driven in Python by setting the pin high to open and low to close the relay.
• A PIR motion sensor wired as a GPIO input lets a polling loop trigger props and sounds automatically when it reports motion.
• The scare can also be fired manually from a phone: an iOS Shortcuts action runs the Python sound script over SSH.
• Adding a Pi Camera with legacy support, H.264-to-MP4 conversion and timestamped filenames records each scare without overwriting previous clips.

Episode details: published October 31, 2022 · 28:39 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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