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Saturday, November 13, 2010

My First Successful (completed) Arduino Project

Since this Halloween we were putting on the Ghost Patrol: BANG and my house was being used as a bad treat dispensary, I wanted to make an exceptionally creepy Jack O'Lantern.  I got a white pumpkin, carved a ghastly grin in its skin with the look of it having been stitched shut, a la Saw or one of the newer ridiculous torture porn flicks. Then I actually stitched it shut with some twine and a big upholstery needle.  For the eyes, I carved cavities in the inside surface of the pumpkin large enough for LEDs.  I stole and modified an arduin sketch, dead bugged together a simple circuit without soldering anything (which led to the final product being a wee bit janky but...), found and modified a pulsing LED Arduino sketch and stuffed the whole works into my pumpkin.  One of those super janky flickering candle LEDs gave the mouth a traditional look while the eyes were red LEDs pulsing on and and off slowly beneath the skin.  It looked freaking awesome.  I wish one of the videos I took came out but the Droid's camera is mostly for show.



Rachel did the awesome Ghosti pumpkin and the melty face terror above. I did the terrified fellow who is rightfully terrified of the melty face terror.

I didn't save the Arduino sketch I used, apparently.  It was just the pulse sketch from the Arduino site library with an LED added and the parameters modified to make it pulse more slowly and creepily.  Cool.