These lighted flexible black widow spiders drop from the porch ceiling when nefarious beings come for candy.
It uses a Teensy 3.0 with Ultrasonic sensor to detect the little monsters.
This drives a Panucatt Stepper driver and a NEMA17 motor.
The power for the LEDs is carried to the spiders through magnet wire spider webs.
You are so mean… LOL
How do you get the power through the spools to the magnet wire. You have a wiper or brushes?
theres an18560 Li-Ion battery inside the spindle… it’s good for about 10 hours.
This beats the heck out of my little lights!
@Carlton_Dodd This project turned out to be much more involved than I originally envisioned.
Battery in the spool, good idea. An amrchair DIYer would look at this and say, pretty simple i could build one in 1/2 an hour. But to go from idea to finished project can be quite a challenge. if i was trying to get this ready for holloween i might be ready for holloween next year. Good work!
Very, very, very cool little project. I wonder how many parents out with their kids will catch just how impressive it is.
Super cool.
The pulleys have different diameters and shapes, so that each spider’s motion is slightly different from the the others.
The stepper motor motor is programmed with smooth acceleration. The spiders drop in 3 steps, then shoot rapidly back to the ceiling, It’s hard to see it in the shakey video, but you can hear it in the audio.
At dinner, I mentioned something to my wife about having rubber spiders drop from the front porch, to which she responded " You can’t do that, it’s only two weeks until Halloween." So I really had no choice at that point as to whether or not to undertake this project. 
“Challenge Accepted!” LOL… I love that! Wish I could get my “heavy duty wire winch” printed… It’s close! Just missing the drive gear now: