In 2023, my son wanted to be a fire truck for Halloween. We built this fire truck costume with working colored lights, a siren (powered by an Arduino), and a horn.
This proved to be pretty obnoxious, since other kids kept pushing the horn button, and whenever there was a line for candy at a house my son would beep the horn and everyone would move out of his way.
We built the shell out of cardboard and painted it with tempera paint. We also fabricated ladders from scrap MDF.
The electronics were fairly elaborate. I built a control panel to power the lights, horn, and siren separately. My son had a very specific type of siren sound that he wanted, and I programmed an Arduino to replicate it.
