Thinkgeek Halloween pumpkin template contest
Our pals at ThinkGeek are having a contest to see who can design the coolest/geekiest pumpkin-carving template. You can view/download the entries at their contest page.
pumpkins
Remote control color-changing pumpkin
Ian Lesnet submitted this cool hack-‘o-lantern to our Make: Halloween Contest 2009. There’s an Instructable here, a Flickr set here, and YouTube video here. It’s a color-changing pumpkin full-court media press! The build uses a ShiftBrite RGB LED module, IR receiver, universal remote control, and a PIC18F2550 as the brains of it all.
Silly-String-shooting Jack-‘o-lantern
From Instructables user Eric Kingston comes this Arduino-controlled Silly String shooting pumpkin. It’s motion-activated, makes a Goblin-esque cackling noise, and Tweets a report each time it squirts another victim. Eric also wins a thousand internet video style points for making his whole point in five seconds with no talking!
24-hr Microchip Technology giveaway sigma – GO!
The giveaway frenzy continues. Note that the prize bundle has changed slightly this time. Now it consists of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1252 Charge Pump Backlight Demo Board. Beginning at noon PDT today, and closing at noon PDT tomorrow, we will be accepting comments, below, describing the Halloween-y use […]
How-To: “Eye of Sauron” swirly vacuum-tube pumpkin
The neatest part about this, er, “Pie of Sauron” pumpkin build by AnubisTTP is the vintage Soviet ‘dekatron’ counting tube that burns at its pupil. It’s also got LED backlighting inside. And I couldn’t resist posting this little dekatron animated .gif from the Wikipedia article:
A Better Way to Slice a Pumpkin
A clever modification to the traditional way of cutting an opening in a pumpkin.
Octoplex polychromic LED pumpkin display
The boys from MaceTech cooked up an impressive yard display with eight RGB LED modules in eight different pumpkins around the yard. Garrett explains:
We made a control board for eight pumpkins, using eight ShiftBars, 50mm cables, a Seeeduino, a ShiftBrite Shield, and a 12V power supply. The ShiftBar potentiometers were adjusted to deliver about 100mA to each of the 24 LED channels. We wired the LED array boards to the control board using cheap 4-wire telephone station cable from Home Depot.
Read more about it here.
