💀 Inspiration
Every school drawer is a small graveyard: cracked phones, retired laptops, routers nobody remembers the password to. Meanwhile, STEM classrooms need IoT hardware that budgets can't cover - students end up watching videos instead of touching real sensors.
SpookyLab asks: what if the "dead" gadgets became the teachers?
🎃 What it does
SpookyLab is an open-source IoT + STEM-education kit that resurrects e-waste into a hands-on classroom lab:
- Resurrect dead devices - a tiny agent turns a retired Android phone or old laptop into a smart sensor node: camera motion sensor, microphone noise meter, touchscreen control panel, flashlight beacon.
- Build a mini haunted house - students wire ESP32 boards with LEDs, servos, buzzers and light sensors to make "ghost doors", "screaming pumpkins" and "flickering candles".
- Learn through missions - every circuit is a Halloween mission on the SpookyLab dashboard: "Wake the Mummy" (servo basics), "The Breathing Candle" (PWM), "Ghost Radar" (live MQTT sensor streams).
- AI tutor built with Kiro - a Kiro-powered assistant explains each mission in plain language, reviews wiring photos, generates practice challenges, and lets teachers author new missions in minutes.
🧟 How we built it
- Spec-driven development in Kiro: each module (device agent, MQTT bridge, dashboard, AI tutor) started as a Kiro spec with requirements and design docs; Kiro steering rules keep the codebase consistent.
- ESP32 + Arduino firmware drives the spooky effects; retired devices stream sensor data over MQTT.
- A Flutter web dashboard visualizes live sensor data and mission progress.
- The tutor is a Kiro Crew agent that reads lesson specs and answers student questions with references to the exact mission steps.
👻 What's next
A "Graveyard Gallery" where classrooms worldwide share their haunted builds - because the best way to teach technology is to bring something back to life.
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