I Over-Engineered My Halloween Decorations Again. This Year, With Help.

I wanted my house to talk to trick-or-treaters. The AI couldn’t track them well enough, so now the lights do the talking once more.

Illustration created by the author.

Last year I built a house that reacts to trick-or-treaters: cameras, some code, and smart lights (last year’s article). In what I can only call a lapse in judgment, it worked. It was a dark, very rainy night, lots of kids came anyway, and I ran out of candy. This year the forecast is a clear night after a sunny day, so I am already doing candy math I would rather not look at.

I typed every line of last year’s version by hand and finished with approximately no margin. This year I had an AI pair programmer, and I still finished in a panic. The difference is that this time the panic came with a test suite.

The Plan That Never Left My Head

My plan for the sequel was lazy in the most ambitious way possible. I would point a live AI model at my cameras, let it understand the scene the way a person would, and then let it talk. To the kids. Out loud. With riddles.

A small vampire approaches, the house clears its throat, and asks what has keys but can’t open doors.