The Great Pumpkin: A Maker’s Canvas for Electric Jack-O-Lantern Projects #electronichalloween
Carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns is perhaps the iconic activity of the Halloween. They are perfect blank canvases for makers to express electronic and interactive ideas. Here are a few pumpkin related halloween projects to give you that little bit of inspiration you need to get going.
First of all, it goes without saying that you can carve the darned things. But this is an important place to start. Some people get really into carving pumpkins and have lots to show you.
Well, you definitely need to add some candle flicker — time to incorporate the electronics! In this case using an ATTiny85 micro controller, programmed with the Arduino IDE.
While this one from the LVL1 hackerspace begs you to get a little closer. “Hello? There you are!” *pow*
The hackerspace NYC Resistor offers a yearly “Pumpkin Hacking Workshop” — check out these “hacked pumpkins” from Make: Live’s Halloween show last year, co-presented by Adafruit’s lovely Becky Stern.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Electronic Halloween is quickly becoming my favorite posts series on Adafruit.