Halloween and the Internet of Things: You wouldn’t necessarily connect the two, at least not instinctively, but they are linked in many ways.

For one, Halloween is full of devices: from LED lighting to strips to smoke machines to speakers blaring scary music, the average household employs a small army of potentially smart-enabled devices on October 31st. Halloween is also a time for safety and surveillance, where security cameras and technology like facial recognition can come in handy, especially when your customers don’t know who will be knocking on their door.

Here are the three key ways the Internet of Things enhances Halloween for every family.

1. Surveillance

IoT technology can quickly and easily turn regular cameras into smart cameras, meaning they can now communicate with your customers’ lights, doorbells, and indoor and outdoor motion sensors (all of which you already sell, right?). This means your customers will have significantly enhanced security on a night when a bunch of strangers will be knocking on their door, some of whom may be carrying some tricks up their sleeve.

If you’ve ever had someone steal a pumpkin from your front porch or yard then you’ll understand the value of improved surveillance on the night of Halloween to your customers. Their cameras and lights will know when to turn on and off, and AI+IoT (AIoT)-based capabilities like facial recognition make cameras even more valuable and safety-enhancing by providing more information on what the image is showing. Plus—when your cameras are communicating with your lights and other devices, such as mist machines, it can help you make that outdoor graveyard even scarier by responding to people’s motions with pre-programmed scares and surprises.

2. Lights, Mists, and Sounds

And speaking of scares and surprises, Halloween just wouldn’t be Halloween without creepy sounds and lights, and if you want to go the extra mile for your customers than you’ll need to equip them with everything they need to make their homes as haunted as possible.

That means smart lighting and smart speakers. Most of this can be controlled through Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, but of course your customer will also need to have IoT-enabled smart lights and speakers installed so that those scream-inducing effects can flourish.

The best smart devices come with mobile apps that let you micro-manage them down to the lighting hue. You can then coordinate the sounds and mists with the lights to create the creepiest and campiest scenes possible, and if you want to take it up a notch you can coordinate the music with the lights and mists for a full-on scream show.

Halloween Lighting

3. Store sales - ie, YOU

Yes—you read that correctly: YOU. Meaning—your stores and brands. With smart home and IoT technology, you can essentially do whatever you want with your in-store set ups, and when creativity abounds, so do sales.

Want to have a door or window creak open every time a customer walks past a certain point in the store? Connect the door hinge to an IoT ecosystem. Want to create a spooky lighting labyrinth that ends with “smart skulls” that shout “BEWARE!”? Use an IoT mobile app to have the lights inside the skulls communicate with the surrounding speakers.

The point is—with IoT technology, anything’s possible and the only limit is your own imagination (which, we all know, isn’t limited in any way, right?). Your customers will want to buy more devices from you simply to ‘Keep up with the Joneses’ and have a scarier set-up than their neighbors. Want more ideas on what’s possible with IoT and Halloween? Check out these Halloween-inspired hacks.