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.

Or maybe you don’t need to carve it after all! Like this great Hack A Day LED pumpkin.

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.

Or maybe you want to go a bit brighter like this Laser Pumpkin from Novalasers. (And here’s the video of the death of this pumpkin.)

Or go a bit more modest like this classic Jack-o-lantern electronics project from Evil Mad Science with a Larson scanner rig.

This team goes full-on multimedia with their pumpkin!

This great Flamethrowing Jack-O’-Lantern tells visitors to back off.

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.

Don’t miss our FIRST EVER Google+ Live Hangout On Air Costume Contest! It will be on Saturday, October 27th! Stay tuned for more info about that– for now be sure to join the Adafruit Google+ page!

View all our Electronic Halloween posts here! From now until 10/31/2012 use the code HALLOWEEN2012 on check out to get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category.