It's not too late to put together a spooky Raspberry Pi -powered Halloween project, and we've got a cool one to share today that's sure to inspire your inner maker. This one comes to us from maker and developer Nathan from NathanBuildsDIY, who's created a really cool Pi-powered AI ghost named Casper that talks to trick-or-treaters.
Much like the ghost he's named after, this ghost is light-hearted and friendly instead of scary. According to Nathan, the idea was to create an interactive ghost who could talk back and forth with trick-or-treaters as they approached the porch. Casper can detect when they're nearby and uses AI to come up with all sorts of conversational quips, from answers to questions to Halloween-themed jokes.
Nathan shared a video showing off Casper's creation's ins and outs. In it, he explained that his design has four main elements. It relies on a distance sensor to look out for approaching trick-or-treaters. Once they're nearby, a microphone listens for audio , which is translated into text. This text is then parsed through an AI system that comes up with the responses.
The main board powering this project is a Raspberry Pi 5. It's connected to an ultrasonic sensor housed inside a cute little bowtie. A few LEDs are thrown into the mix as well, illuminating his eyes and mouth. The head features a custom 3D-printed frame that has been made open source, with STLs available for anyone to download and print at home.
The video goes into extremely in-depth detail about the software side of the project, so we won't give away too much. However, we'll touch on the major components, which include Vosk for text-to-speech and Google Gemini for all of the AI processing. You can peruse the source code over at GitHub .
If you want to see this Raspberry Pi project in action, you can check it out on YouTube . There, you'll find not just a demo but a comprehensive breakdown of its construction.